Queen’s Wreath (Petrea volubilis) is also known as Purple Wreath and Sandpaper Vine. It’s a native of tropical America, though not Hawaii. The plant can take the form of a vine or shrub. This one was more of a shrub. The blooms are prolific and can occur twice a year.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘National Kids and Pets Day.’ See more responses here.
This is Gigi, one of the cats at work. She wasn’t about to move, but she was keeping a bit of an eye on me, just in case.
These were at Mauna Kea Resort when I went down there for an evening snorkel.
I was down at Punalu’u Black Sand Beach Park with my brother, and we were watching a turtle resting on the beach, in an area enclosed by a low rock wall. I told him that most turtles hauled out here, but they sometimes came ashore on other parts of the beach, and I pointed to a dark lump, surrounded by cones, some distance away.
Looking at it, I thought, that’s a big turtle! So I zoomed in with my camera and saw it was actually a monk seal. We hot-footed around and I took these photos, which I later sent in to the Marine Mammal Center, which keeps track of monk seals.
They responded to let me know the seal was ‘Imikai, a daughter of RB00, who is also the mother of the last seal I saw (here). ‘Imikai was born on Lānaʻi in 2018 and has had two pups of her own. Apparently, she came to the Big Island in 2023 and has been seen mostly around the southern parts of the island.
I saw this beetle on a tree I was cutting up. It was shiny, which always gets my attention. It’s a metallic wood-boring beetle, and this one is relatively plain compared to some of its more flamboyant relatives.
Visiting Kailua Kona, it’s never hard to know if a cruise ship is in. They invariably are the largest thing in view, dwarfing any and all of the downtown buildings. On a recent visit, I got this photo from the Walmart parking lot (a solid contender for the Walmart with the best view in the world!).
It used to be that Wednesday was cruise ship day, but currently there are three or four ships a week stopping by. This one is the Europa 2, which is operated by Hapag-Lloyd Cruises. It carries up to 516 passengers, which means it is less crowded than most cruise ships.
The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 139. Captions are on the photos.
You can see more responses here.
I think what these signs mean to say is ‘Park at your own risk!’
Graham's Island 