shave ice & gelato

To finish out my tree mini series, the first time I saw the Rainbow Eucalyptus, also known as the Mindanao Gum, was a few years ago while I was on the University of Hawaii campus hanging out before my photography class began. I was immediately drawn to the beautiful colors of the bark of this tree.

The Rainbow Eucalyptus is originally from Papua New Guinea. It is grown nearly exclusively for it's amazingly colored trunk.The botanical name of this tree is Eucalyptus deglupta.

I went to White Plains Beach today to hang out for a while and read my book. White Plains Beach used to be a private military beach but is now a beach open to the public and is about 4 or 5 miles from my house. I parked my car, set up my chair, and noticed a few people with cameras walking towards a spot a little bit to the left of my chair. I walked over to see what was going on. There, below a little mound of sand was a cute Hawaiian monk seal.

I moved here 25 years ago and this is only the second time I have ever seen a seal on the beach (post on my first seal sighting). I talked to the lifeguard to find out if this was the first sighting of this seal. He said there have been 4 seals hanging out in the area for a while now. After about an hour or so at the beach, I headed on home.

Here are a few cute photos of the seal on the beach. He or she was inching his/her way up and finally rolled over to snooze for the day.

A mystery but a beautiful one as beach goers and park users noticed a beautiful sight...four black swans at Ala Moana Beach Park. I saw this entertaining story on KITV news last night. Unfortunately the this news site does not have links to embed videos. If you want to see these magnificent creatures and this interesting video about them, click on the black swans link above to view the 1:49 minute video. My favorite part of the video is when the news reporter tries to interview one of the black swans.

I was fortunate to see a few beautiful black swans at the Byodo-In Temple last summer. I have never seen black swans at the beach. In case you have not seen a black swan before and do not have time to watch the video, I am re-posting one of the black swan photos I posted last year.

I was amazed at how many yellow photos I have. Yellow buildings, yellow Smart Cars, yellow foods, yellow vehicles, yellow hats, yellow chairs, yellow trees, etc. etc.

Since I have been blogging so much about Italy lately, I decided to share something from Hawaii. I have been walking by this gorgeous yellow hibiscus flower all week at school. The bush is located between my class and the Kindergarten class. I grabbed the camera in my classroom one day and took a few photos as our class headed to the bathroom, a place we visit frequently. I often joke that my desk should be located in that bathroom.

Most of the hibiscus bushes at our school produce red hibiscus flowers. We also have a few bushes with orange and white or light pink flowers. The bush with the yellow hibiscus flowers at our school is my favorite.

One more view...

This yellow hibiscus flower is not the native yellow hibiscus (Hibiscus brackenridgei A. Gray) which is the Hawaii State Flower. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page of this link, you will see a close up of the native yellow hibiscus.

This morning I had an appointment in town (Honolulu). I ended up getting into town much earlier than I anticipated due to very little traffic. I had about thirty minutes to kill. I decided to head up to the Makiki Forest Recreation Area or as many know it, the Hawaii Nature Center. It is only a 5 minute drive from the craziness of traffic, high rises, and noise of the city.

I am always amazed at how peaceful this place can be. I haven't been up there in a quite a while. The gravel parking lot has moved down to the bottom of the road. They have knocked down the old Nature Center (a great place to go on a field trip or to take kids to on the weekends) and built a new one. There are two hiking trails I used to hike quite a bit that start by the Nature Center.

I love walking around in this forest area. The smell of eucalyptus is in the air. Birds are chirping, the brook is babbling ( the Kanealole Stream), and the leaves of the trees are rustling in the wind. Oh and every once and a while you will hear a few chickens and roosters and if you are lucky, you will see a few hanging out.

Here are some of the photos I took today. The photos are of my walk from the parking lot to the beginning of the trail head. I did not hike today but hope to go back next week with a friend if the weather cooperates and do the Makiki Valley Loop Trail - the Kanealole Trail, the Makiki Valley Trail, and the Maunalaha Trail (all of which connect at one point to make the loop).

I took these photos while hiking in the Makiki Forest Recreation Area on Thursday.

I have been sitting in a state of paralysis looking at my list of things to do for my trip. This year for once, I have time between the end of the school year and the start of my trip. If I don't get started on my list soon, I will be running around with my head cut off the day I leave like I usually do.

I finally broke down my to do list into things to do each day this afternoon. That certainly helped a little. I still have a few more things to accomplish for today's list but there are a few more hours left in the day. I have decided that I am going to abandon my blog and try not to do more than peek at everyone's blogs until I get everything done. It is so much easier for me to sit and read blogs than to attack my list. I need to get focused and stop procrastinating so I will still have my head when I leave for Italy next week.

Since I don't have any photos of a chicken running around with its head cut off, I thought I would leave you with some photos of various types of pineapples. that way this won't be such a boring post and besides, this gives me a little more time to procrastinate before getting back to the list.

I took these photos with Candi & Bill up at the Dole Pineapple place. I should have taken photos of the names of each type of pineapple plant but I didn't.

(There's more pinepples on the next page...)

My problem this week was having too many choices. I even took some new spotted photos today for a photography class I am taking. But in the end, I just could not pass up cute. I took these photos at Sea Life Park on Oahu in April, 2005.

These were going to be my photos for the spotted PhotoHunt theme a few weeks ago until I decided to go with the spotted fish photos.

I found this plant on that same side of the road not far from the bromeliad plant photo I posted yesterday. I have no clue what type of plant this is (Marta?) but I thought it was pretty cool looking, especially when I noticed the the back side of the plant.

*Mahalo Marta! The plant is called the Laua'e fern, which grows abundantly in the Hawaiian islands. The botanical name is Phymatosorus scolopendria. It is used by native Hawaiians for scenting clothing and leis.

A couple of days ago, I decided to take my brand new Canon T2i camera to the beach for the first time. I only took the kit lens (18-55mm lens) with me, being a bit nervous about the salt spray and possible sand since it was a windy day.

I drove to White Plains Beach first hoping that perhaps I would luck out and find another seal on the beach since I saw a seal on this beach twice (a few days apart) two years ago. No seal this time. Because White Plains Beach is not not really one of the most picturesque beaches, I got back into my car and drove a bit further down to the beach at the end of the road by the Coast Guard station. This beach in my opinion is a nicer beach, although also a bit rugged. As you drive to this beach, you will see a few cars parked along the side of the road at the more deserted part of the beach before reaching the parking lot. Most people that go to this beach park in the parking lot at the end of the road. There is a bathroom at this beach but there are no lifeguards.

I hung out for a while taking lots of photos, trying to learn the ins and outs of my new camera. I am realizing that it is going to take me a while to learn to take good photos with a DSLR. I am determined though not use the auto and program modes and instead take all of my photos using the manual settings. After taking an hour's worth of photos, I realized that I forgot to check some of my settings! My white balance setting was on cloudy (and it was a sunny day) and my ISO was on 200 where 100 might have been a better setting. Even so, when comparing my photos to some photos I took with my Canon G9 at this same beach a couple of months ago, I could see a difference in photo quality.

After about an hour at the beach, I got back in my car and drove just a bit to the area where people park on the side of the road to check out the more isolated area of the beach.

I only planned to spend about 15 minutes or so before heading on home to watch the Red Sox game (in hindsight I would have been better off skipping that disastrous game). Just before leaving, I took a walk down the beach to check out the view around the bend. As I got closer, I noticed a roped off area with some signs posted.

It was a SEAL!!!

Now, you would think reading my blog that I see seals on the beach every day. Hawaiian Monk Seals are endangered species and do not generally hang out on beaches in Hawaii. I have just been very fortunate to be at the right place at the right time to see a few of these magnificent creatures. This is only the fourth time I have seen a Hawaiian Monk Seal on a beach in Hawaii.

My first seal sighting was in August, 2007 up on the North Shore.

My second seal sighting was in March 2008 at White Plains Beach, a beach not too far from my house. This time, I arrived at the beach just as the seal was coming out of the water.

My third seal sighting was a few days later. This seal (not sure if it was the same seal) was stretched out snoozing at the other end White Plains Beach. I recently posted a photo from this seal sighting a couple of weeks ago as one of my PhotoHunt posts. Ironically, this was my first beach outing with my brand new Canon G9 camera two years ago.

Seals are not very active creatures. Once they find their spot for the day, they don't move much. I lucked out catching the seal I saw on Friday do this move:

Monday afternoon, I drove up to the North Shore to take some photos with my new camera, my 60mm lens and my brand new 10-22mm lens. I stopped at four beaches and took tons of photos. Here are a few photos that I took at my first stop, Laniakea Beach, otherwise known as turtle beach.

The purple crown flower (known as pua kalaunu in Hawaiian) is a popular flower used for making leis.

I took these photos yesterday afternoon using my 60mm macro lens. One of the skills I really need to work on when shooting close up is focusing. I have found focusing to be much more challenging when shooting with a DSLR, or maybe it is more of a challenge because I am shooting manual. The three photos I posted turned out to be the best out of the bunch. I ended up doing a bit of cropping on all three due to focusing issues, but in the end, I like how they came out.