There’s something bugging me

A tiny female Hawaiian Garden Spider with a much bigger one in the background

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Let’s Get Small.’ See more responses here.

Sorry to start off (above) with spiders, for those with aversions to them, but this one is very small. It’s a tiny female Hawaiian Garden Spider, probably no more than a quarter-inch across, though if it survives, it will grow to be as big as the other one in the photo.

In the gallery below, a Seven-spotted Ladybug putters about in some very green leaves. Another spider, this time a jumping spider no bigger than the little one at the top, has jumped a moth bigger than itself. Finally, what I think is a hover fly pretending to be a wasp with its black and yellow markings.

A Seven-spotted ladybug in Hawaii
A jumping spider captures a moth in Hawaii
A hover fly pretending to be a wasp[

Finally, a Camponotus variegatus ant or carpenter ant. Next, a bee collecting pollen on an agave attenuata. Note the tiny aphids sharing the flower. And finally ants and aphids on the leaf of a Hawaiian Crown Flower. In this symbiotic relationship, the aphids produce sweet goodies for the ants to eat and the ants provide protection against the aphids’ predators.

A Camponotus variegatus ant or carpenter ant
A Bee on an agave attenuata flower
Ants and aphids on an a Hawaiian Crown Flower

African basil flowers

The flowers of an African basil plant

We got this African basil plant when the usual kind we grow was not available. It was an OK substitute, but when the other kind returned this one got planted in the garden. It’s thrived in its new location, producing these lovely stalks of purple flowers.

What the heck are these?

Two pay phone at Spencer Beach Park in Hawaii

I saw these at Spencer Beach Park and realized there are generations of people who will have no idea what these are, or indeed why such things ever existed. But it’s an historical fact that telephones (they were once called that) used to be connected by wires. Go ahead, Duck it (I won’t use Google) on your phone, that’s in your pocket, not connected to anything, except to everything.

I was going to return to the park to see if the phones worked, but it’s clear the one on the left doesn’t, and chances are the one on the right doesn’t either. Which is pretty much the way they were when that was the way everyone placed phone calls when they were out and about!

I got the blues real good

A broken window in Hawaii
One of the broken windows in the next door house mentioned in yesterday’s post.
A blue blur
I was photographing monarch butterflies and this photo was one of them. Use your imagination.

The Sunday Stills Monthly Color Challenge theme is ‘Blue.’ See more responses here. After sorting through some photos, I found a cluster of abstract blues that I like so here they are.

Chainlink fencing over a blue tarp in Hawaii
Some chainlink fencing wrapped around a blue tarp covering something or other.
A blue light at an airport in Hawaii
A blue light at Upolu Airport, up close and personal
Blue panels and rivets on a helicopter in Hawaii
Rivets on the skin of a very blue helicopter.
Goatfishes congregate over a sandy bottom in Hawaii
Goatfishes swimming in blue-green water in the company of a bluer parrotfish