This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Celestial.’ See more responses here.
I don’t know what happened. The last time I looked, the moon was full and round. But not here. I think the mice got to it!
Mice?
Category Archives: Photo Challenges
Tangerines
The truth is, I get to cheat on Bushboy’s Last on the Card photo challenge (more responses here). I generally see his post in the late afternoon here since he’s in Australia and many hours ahead of me in Hawaii. That was the case today and when I looked, I found that, for various reasons, I hadn’t taken any photos in more than a week.
So I poked my head outside and immediately thought of the tangerine trees in the yard. One is so heavily laden with fruit that a couple of branches are scraping the ground. Despite the trees looking to be in terrible condition, they fruit prolifically. An interesting fact is that the only flower I’ve ever seen on these trees was an orchid growing at the base of one of the branches. What’s that about?
Road trip to Hawaii Tropical Bioreserve and Garden
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Favorite Vacation Spot.’ See more responses here.
It’s been a long while since I took a vacation, but a favorite day out is a road trip to the east side of the island and a visit to Hawaii Tropical Bioreserve & Garden.
The day starts with a drive out of Hawi, up the hill to Kohala Mountain Road. This winding road climbs to around 3,500 feet before descending into Waimea. One the way, it passes through pastureland that is home to cattle, horses, and sheep.
Horse riders near Kohala Mountain Road. 
A view of Kohala Ranch with Kohala Mountain Road on the right. 
A Pueo flying.
A few miles after driving through Waimea, there’s a left turn onto Old Saddle Road. These days, the main road across the island is a smooth, wide thoroughfare, but it’s not so long ago that the highway was all like Old Saddle Road – narrow and twisting. In those days, rental car companies would not allow their cars to be driven on that road. Old Saddle Road is the last remnant of the original road and it’s one of my favorite roads to drive here, not just because of the road’s qualities, but because it’s one of the most reliable places to see pueos, the Hawaiian short-eared owl. On this road I drive like one of those people you follow and say ‘What the !@^%$@)&^ is that idiot doing?’ I’m prone to zipping off the tarmac and bolting from the car, camera in hand, snapping photos as I go.
A view of Pōhakuloa Training Area and Mauna Kea State Recreation Area. 
A section of the Pu’u O’o trail.
Old Saddle Road joins the new highway a just before it reaches Pohakuloa Training Area, a large military base in the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. It’s not unusual to hear the sound of shells exploding here as they do live ammunition fire. Past this area, there are several good hiking trails that venture into the high elevation landscape. This is one of the best areas for seeing native birds that are still hanging on in much reduced habitat.
After that, there’s the descent into Hilo and then a jog north to the garden where, every time I visit, I see something different, something that wasn’t blooming on previous visits or that I’d just missed in the profusion wonderful plants to see.
Pink anthurium 
Erythrina crista galli 
Painted bamboo 
Onomea Falls 
Orchid 
Spider lily by the ocean
And on the way back there’s a good chance that there’ll be a splendid sunset to be enjoyed.
Also posted for this week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Road Trip.’ See more responses here.
Abstracts: Shadows on a wall
I posted a photo of this wall for Becky’s Squares in April, but I liked this close up of the shadows of the plants against the bright colors of the wall.
Gray days
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Gray.’ See more responses here.
The top photo is finally getting scheduled after being lined up for a previous Sunday Stills challenge with the theme of ’emerging.’ I was walking along the coast on a damp, gray day, when I heard a noise out over the water. I couldn’t see anything, but the noise got louder. Finally, this helicopter emerged out of the clouds. It looked like a military helicopter, which would have been the most likely thing flying in those conditions, and which tend to be louder than the average helicopter.
In the second photo, a pair of nene chow down on a strip of grass beside Upolu airstrip’s gray tarmac under an equally gray sky.
Atop Mauna Kea
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Mountain Top.’ See more responses here.
Mauna Kea is the highest mountain on earth, when measured from its base to its peak. It logs in at 33,476 feet, 13,803 of which are above sea level.
The top photo is a late afternoon view from near the summit of Mauna Kea, with the Subaru Telescope on the left and the two Keck Telescopes to the right. The top of the cloud layer lies a thousand or more feet below them, which is one of the reasons it’s such a prime site for astronomy.
The second photo is a view from Upolu, showing the summit with a lot of snow on it. While this photo was taken in February, the volcano is high enough that snow can fall at any time of year.
Whatever the weather
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Weather.’ See more responses here. Last month, I did a post about our local weather here. Weather in one place can be very different from another place just a few miles away.
The basics are that the east side of the island is wetter and cloudier, the west side, sunny and dry. Both sides are warm, but not as hot as they might be thanks to the prevailing northeast trade winds, though they’re not as consistent as they used to be. Paradoxically, the driest places on the island are also the coldest, the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, which are usually above the clouds.
So here are a few photos illustrating some of the varying weather we get, even if it wasn’t forecast.
Paniolos
The current Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Hands & Feet.’ See more responses here.
I wasn’t sure I had anything for this topic, but then I thought of these paniolos, who I saw at Upolu last month. Paniolos are the Hawaiian version of cowboys and these days they often ride four-wheel vehicles. But there are still occasions when they’ll saddle up while moving or tending cattle.
This scene occurred last month when they were moving a herd of cattle into a new pasture. I arrived at the tail end of the process, when the paniolos were walking back to their vehicles.
So what does this have to do with hands and feet? Well, it occurred to me that hands and feet are the main tools of the trade for communicating with the horse being ridden. And as for the horses, their feet are shod with lucky horseshoes and their height is measured in hands.
Enough said!
Graham's Island 