It’s the end of another month and time again for Bushboy’s Last on the Card challenge. (See more responses here.) The top photo is the last one I took in May, a Praying Mantis that’s lucky to be alive after I nearly squashed it with a water bottle on the railing where it was perched.
The bottom photo is how I think the photo looks best, cropped and adjusted to focus attention on the mantis and its shadow.
A Yellow-fronted Canary checks out its surroundings on the South Kohala coast. Posted in response to this week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme of ‘Feathered Friends.’ See more responses here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘What’s That Aroma?’ See more responses here. Well, for this theme I just couldn’t get past this photo I took a while ago.
I spotted this wild pig in a cow pasture, burrowing into exactly what you think that’s likely to be in a cow pasture. But it’s not just the pig’s dinner that’s aromatic, the pigs do too. When they go by the bedroom window at night, I sometimes hear them, but I’m almost always alerted to their presence by the aroma, which is pungent enough to prompt an immediate, ‘What is that smell?’
This week’s Sunday Stills color challenge theme is ‘Teal or Aqua.’ See more responses here. I’m going underwater for a selection of aquatic aquas.
The top photo shows what happens when divers have too much time on their hands.
Next, we have some Square-spot Goatfishes and a few Orangeband Surgeonfishes meandering over a patch of sand. Then a Bullethead Parrotfish displaying a variety of colors. And a shoal of Hawaiian Silversides going hither and yon over a rocky bottom.
Finally, a couple of Spinner Dolphin photos, where they swam below me over an aqua background.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Emerging.’ See more responses here.
A while ago I posted a photo of Plumeria buds (here). I returned to that tree several times over the next few weeks and took photos of the same cluster of buds and then flowers to see how they developed. Plumerias aren’t one-bloom-and-done trees. Instead, there’s a continual production of buds, which bloom and die.
I like the swirls and colors of the buds and the different stages of the flowers emerging. I’m not the only one. All kinds of insects can be seen on both the buds and the flowers.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Fabulous Florals.’ See more responses here. For this, I’m taking a short jaunt off the island to revisit the first tropical garden I planted. That was in Washington State. Now, I’m aware that Washington State isn’t in the tropics, but I like a challenge.
My goal was to create a garden of hardy tropical-looking plants, with colorful flowers and/or big, bountiful foliage. The first summer, I laid the foundations with three Windmill Palms and a wall of bamboo alongside one fence. Colorful canna lillies and big foliage gave an inkling of what was to come.
The second summer was when the garden took off. Ground covers spread. Vines took off. Pots provided focal points.
And of course, there were those fabulous florals.
One corner of the garden featured a Dicksonia Antarctica tree fern, which was soon joined by a Dicentra Scandens-Golden tears vine, Eccremocarpus scaber – Chilean glory vine, and a Clematis Armandii. There’s less than a month between the second and third photos in the gallery below, and the following summer the area was rampant with color and growth.
But it is Washington State and there are winters and in the winter it can snow. The palms and bamboo bent low under the weight of the snow, but they survived. The tiki torch looked distinctly unhappy with the weather, possibly jealous of those lucky plants that were moved indoors for the winter.
This week’s Sunday Stills color challenge theme is ‘Diamond or Quartz.’ See more responses here. Why have one when you can have both in the same photo!
Yesterday I posted a small town response to this week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme of ‘Urban.’ See more responses here. It wasn’t until after that post went live that it occurred to me I could have used photos from my jaunt to Honolulu a few years back. It’s not the Big Island, but in Hawaii, Honolulu is by far the largest urban area.
When I got home, I had a look to see what photos I could use and came up with these images. The entire population of Hawi could fit comfortably into one of those skyscrapers.
Graham's Island 