This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Oldie-but-Goodie or Favorite Photo.’ (See more responses here.)
This seemed like a good opportunity to run a few of my favorite photos from the first year of this blog.
Upolu is home the last dairy on the Big Island. It has a large herd of cows, mostly black and white holsteins, but with a few other kinds mixed in. However, this cow is a little different. It’s the only one I’ve seen with a collar or horns.
I get the impression this is somewhat of the dairy’s pet, which is allowed to wander. And lately, it’s been wandering on the road. When I drive by it looks up and then continues munching grass, which grows well by the road.
I always feel a bit sorry for cows that are plagued by the masses of flies that gather on their bodies. But I also find interesting the patterns made by the black and white cows, the direction of their hairs and the black spots of the flies themselves.
Balloon plant (Asclepias physocarpa) is an invasive weed, introduced to Hawaii as a fiber crop. A member of the milkweed family, it is considered to have medicinal properties, but parts of the plant are also poisonous.
I saw several of these plants in a pasture occupied by livestock and, like the cow in the photo, they were avoiding the plants. Consequently, the pasture consisted of close-cropped grass and a generous sprinkling of these scrubby plants, 2- to 3-feet high, though they can grow to 6-feet tall.
The ‘balloons’ are actually the fruits of the plants. When ripe, they’ll burst and release a multitude of white silky-haired seeds.
This group of cattle was crowded together beneath a small shrub on the side of Pu’u Wa’awa’a. They were making the most of the scant shade on offer and weren’t about to give it up because of my presence.
I think this is Pu’u Kaliali, southeast of Waimea, catching a patch of late afternoon sun on an otherwise cloudy day. Waimea is the home to Parker Ranch, the second largest ranch in the U.S.A – there’s a bigger one in Texas of course. The rolling pasture land in the area is home to a large contingent of cattle.
I used to live in the same town as Jim Whittaker, the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest. He duly published an autobiography titled, ‘A Life on the Edge.’ As someone who lives close to the flat center surrounded by fluffy pillows, I use that phrase as a punchline for many things.
“I think I might have another cookie.” “Ooo, life on the edge.”
“I bought new shorts that are a slightly different tan shade than my previous pair.” “Life on the edge.”
You get the idea, which has nothing to do with anything really except that, on this day, the cattle in these photos really were living life on the edge.
There are a great many deeply meaningful and insightful blogs out there, but this isn’t one of them. Instead, here’s a photo of two beef cattle in a field. The reason I like it is for the stem of dry grass sticking out of the one on the left. I imagine him saying something along the lines of, “You ain’t from around these parts, are you?”
