Saturday of my Birthday Weekend

I loved taking pictures of the wild flowers --surprise, surprise. The iris's are in bloom.

I found this wild iris along the Big Sur coast.

This wild iris was along the trail to Pfeiffer Falls

Flowers and Birds

I love photographing flowers as we hike -- and this year we started getting to know the birds on Kauai.  They are much more difficult to photograph so I don't have pictures of them.  The songs they sing fill the air as we hiked. Every once in a while we'd spot a gecko. On this hike I spotted the first wild orchids we've seen on the island.

 A little green gecko

 Strawberry guava was ripe and very fragrant

Ginger bloom just beginning to open

Orchids and Water Lily blossoms

I enjoyed taking an hour to photograph the Plantation's orchids and water lilies.

The Springs Retreat

What a great time we had at The Springs. The stories of what God did in our lives is amazing.
I loved this vine -- it reminds me of myself. If I'm not clinging to the vine, then I'm running around in circles.
Dear Friends -- LouAnn, Christy, Jamie, Cheryl and Karen
Jeannie and I were in the same small group. The tulips and wildflowers were beautiful. I don't think we've had more gorgeous weather. The sky was incredibly clear -- so we had a chance to see Saturn and her rings, and Sirius and the nebulae where stars are born. "Lead me to the rock that is higher than I" became my prayer.

Geckos

The lizards on Kauai look more like geckos to me -- they are about 6 inches long and are so cute (I love their "toes"). Kevin took this photo of a gecko on a wall - whenever we got home at night we'd see geckos hanging around.

As we were walking by several ginger plants, Kevin spotted a little green gecko licking water out of the petals of the ginger. In this photo, he's checking me out. (It's amazing how well he blends in with the green leaves.)

Then, he leaned into the flower's shadow to try to hide a bit. (I uploaded these photos in high resolution, so you could blow them up to see him better.) This is Hawaii's state flower, the yellow hibiscus (there isn't a gecko in this photo). Before 1988, the state flower was a red hibiscus--I'm not sure why they changed. Apparently hibiscus were thought to be endemic to Kauai until 1980 when a botantist discovered that it is really an African plant that escaped from cultivation decades ago (so the state flower isn't really from the state!). What I didn't know was that the blossom only lasts 1 day, and then it dies. No wonder I could never get my hibiscus hedge to be fully in bloom!