Hello lovely peeps,
Here we are again at the beginning of the week. How time flies!
I have a lovely postcard to show you today, and some drinks for Elizabeth and Bluebeard's T-Party.
And did I tell you I love turtles?....
Let me show you my postcard:
It was sent to me by someone in Indianapolis, who forgot to put his name on the card. It shows a turtle, an endangered honu Hawaiian green sea turtle.
(Scientific name: Chelonia mydas.)
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website writes this:
Honu are a migratory species, traveling hundreds or thousands of miles from foraging areas to nesting beaches. Over 95% of the Hawaiian Green sea turtle population nests in French Frigate Shoals in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. They largely travel to the main Hawaiian Islands to forage for food and bask on the beaches. Limited nesting and foraging occurs in other locations in the Pacific such as America Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. When they are not migrating, honu remain in shallow waters like lagoons, reefs, bays, and shoals to feed and nest along open, undisturbed beaches.
Green sea turtles are also found throughout the world. Other genetically distinct populations range all over the Pacific, the Caribbean and Atlantic coasts of North and South America, the Mediterranean Sea, and northern parts of the Indian Ocean. But the Hawaiian Green sea turtle exists only in Hawaiian archipelago.
Hatchling honu eat a diet of fish and plants, but then switch to a mostly herbivorous diet of algae and seagrass between ages 5 and 7. Less frequently, juveniles and adults may eat invertebrates like sponges and jellyfish.
Their lifespan is estimated to be 60 to 70 years, but honu do not reach sexual maturity until 25 to 40 years! And the length of reproductivity varies: ranging from 17 to 23 years.
Once a female can reproduce, she will return to her nesting site every 2 to 5 years and lay anywhere between 3 and 9 clutches. Each clutch varies between 75 to 200 eggs, with an interval of about 12 days between each clutch. After months of laying eggs, she returns to the sea to forage. Depending on the temperatures, the eggs may hatch after 45 to 75 days; and the hatchlings emerge usually at night to travel toward the brightest horizon: the ocean.
The stamps are really cool:
The stamp on the left features a humming bird. For us Europeans this is a real treat as we don't have them in Europe. The middle stamp carries on with the ocean theme: it's a manatee. Also unknown in Europe as far as I know.
Wikipedia writes:
Manatees (family Trichechidae, genus Trichechus) are large, fully aquatic, mostly herbivorous marine mammals sometimes known as sea cows. There are three accepted living species of Trichechidae, representing three of the four living species in the order Sirenia: the Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis), the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), and the West African manatee (Trichechus senegalensis). They measure up to 4.0 metres (13 ft 1 in) long, weigh as much as 590 kilograms (1,300 lb), and have paddle-like tails.
Manatees are herbivores and eat over 60 different freshwater and saltwater plants. Manatees inhabit the shallow, marshy coastal areas and rivers of the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the Amazon basin, and West Africa.
Amazing animals!
What have I been up to? Not much. In this heat I stay indoors. Summers here are boring as all my clubs and groups etc have stopped for the summer months. I do go to Pilates twice a week in the morning, but I don't have any photos of that to show you.
I do have a confession to make: I have succumbed to advertising and bought (online) a handbag with a ginger cat on it.
The price was reasonable and I only realised after I pressed the button, that there was no delivery date. This usually means, the article comes from China and might take months to get here. Oh well, it will be a nice surprise when it does, as I will have completely forgotten about it.
On Saturday evenings I lead a group called Intercambio. It's a Spanish-English conversation group. We have all become friends and we regularly go out socially.
There is a restaurant in our village that only opens in the summer. It is called Angela's Patio.
The food is exceptionally good and we had booked a table (inside) last Saturday:
The roof opens up, so at night it is lovely.
Below is a photo from the Internet.
Here is the menu (in English), as I know some people like to see it:
I had pork shank (knuckle), which was simple but delicious. It fell apart and was actually too much for me to eat so I took some of the meat home and I had another meal on Sunday.
Visible is my glass of white wine for Elizabeth and Bluebeard's T-Party. I could have had red wine (with meat) but I was so used to saying white wine, that I completely forgot.
Here we all are. You probably recognise them all by now, as I always go out with the same friends. (I'm the one with the black top.)
That's all from me this Tuesday,
Happy T-Day,
Lisca
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