Well, not exactly on the beach in Santa Monica, but on the corner of Arizona and Ocean overlooking the Blue Pacific. The Art Deco designs of some of the structures in this area rival those of the South Beach District, Miami.

I took this shot after my semi-annual dental check-up. Click to enlarge.

One of the weekly chores is to fill the bird feeders out back. Bob is getting ready to put the feeder back up on the garden crook. Our customers are sparrows and house finches most of the year.

Just to have a little color in the planters on our front porch, I recently planted these zinnias to do the job. I think it’s working . . .

Click to enlarge.

This sunlit beauty is one of many yellow hibiscus blooms on the bush today. Click for big.

There is a staircase leading up from Via Casino that leads upwards in the direction of the Chime Tower. The stairs stop and the walkway leads to a street where you can walk up the rest of the way to the Chimes. I paused at that point and snapped several shots across the horizon left to right to later be assembled into a panoramic image for the website. Click to see the image in the viewer.

I used the zoom feature on my little Canon A710 IS camera to capture this image of Holly Hill House, about a mile from our balcony at the Hotel Metropole. Read what some other websites are saying about this house below the image.

From Island Life:

The charming Queen Anne style cottage on the bluff over looking Avalon Bay has been a local landmark since 1890. The third oldest house in Avalon, its history mirrors that of the town. The house has always been a private residence, and Vlctor Kreis, the current owner, has restored it and furnished it with turn-of-the-century antiques.

From Silvery.net

The picturesque Holly Hill House is one of the top three or four icons on Santa Catalina Island. It’s perched on one side of the little valley that forms the edges of the City of Avalon. The vintage home is representative of the Queen Anne variant style of classic Victorian architecture. Supposedly, the little turret caught fire and burned, but this was fully restored by the home’s present owner.

From Catalina Images

Built in the late 1800’s almost single handedly by Peter Gano using his horse, “Mercury”, to haul large timbers and lumber. It was to become home for him and his betrothed who lived on the mainland. Her fear of isolation on the island ended their wedding plans and made Peter an embittered man. Legend has it that he posted a sign on his property saying, ” No women allowed”, and lived in the house alone for several years until he sold it and moved back to the mainland. The Queen Anne style of the Holly House is just one very fine example of many of the diverse architectural sights of Avalon.

As promised, this is the bloom of Stapelia gigantea, also known as the carrion plant. You can see pollinators crawling on it near the center of the flower when you click to enlarge this picture.

As one can surmise from the name, the flowers don’t smell particularly pleasant. They lure flies to do their pollinating for them, and they do this with a number of ingenious adaptations. The surface of the flowers is covered by fine “hair” and the overall color is flesh-toned. The color of the center of the flower is a deep red, like a wound, which is what flies would normally be attracted to on a carcass. Then, of course, there’s the smell. It really is putrid, and so convincing that flies even lay their eggs on it, although when the maggots hatch, they starve to death, since there really isn’t a cadaver there for their nourishment.

The carrion flower has a number of other common names, as creative as it is strange. It is called Zulu giant, hairy starfish flower, star cactus and starfish cactus. These last two names are misleading since this is not a cactus at all, but the blossoms do resemble starfish.

The Stapelia gigantea is considered an invasive plant in Hawaii and a weed in Australia.