

A Sleepy Orange Butterfly feeds on the flowers of a Porterweed plant.


A Sleepy Orange Butterfly feeds on the flowers of a Porterweed plant.

Having not seen any dolphins in ages, this past weekend I had my second encounter in the last two weeks. In this instance, the pod of at least 50 Spinner Dolphins went zipping on by, but any encounter is better than none!


Some Firecracker flowers amongst banana leaves at Akaka Falls State Park. Posted for Terri’s Flower Hour. See more responses here.

A lot of new construction these days starts with a concrete slab, but this building has a post and pier beginning. One thing you don’t have to worry about in Hawaii is cold weather freezing your house’s pipes! Our water line runs above ground from the meter to the house. There are disadvantages to this though. Last week, the line ruptured because it runs through a clump of palms, and those growing plants finally bent the water line beyond its ability to flex.

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Colors of Lava and Black.’ See more responses here. I thought a collection of colorful lava fit the bill. These were taken on two of the trails in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, the Kau Desert Trail and the Puna Coast Trail.







Finally, some red lava erupting from Kilauea volcano. I posted a few days ago (here) about the pressurized situation at the volcano when I visited last week. This is a screen shot from one of the live webcams at Kilauea (here). This most recent eruption began a little after three yesterday morning and ended around 6 hours later. I missed it by a week!


A Fiery Skipper Butterfly looking quite regal.

A pair of Bluespine Unicornfishes cruise through clear waters off the Kohala coast.

Happily, I don’t spend a lot of time in waiting rooms, but when I do, I tend to look around rather than at my phone. These carpet tiles at my optometrist caught my eye. They might have been designed to warm me up for my upcoming exam!