Author: Charlie

Retired American nature-lover, living in Costa Rica, photographing birds and other jewels of nature. This site simply reports on my joys of being RETIRED IN COSTA RICA!
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FALL? The Interesting Strangler Fig

Recently all the leaves were falling off the Strangler Fig Tree – still green!
This is the Strangler Fig Tree before.

Now it is almost bare, but . . . 

Immediately new buds started popping out and then . . .

Buds turning to new leaves which will again soon hide its host tree in there.
The host tree is nearly dead with one limb showing leaves.

Read more about Strangler Fig Trees (a bunch of different species) on Wikipedia. Note that it is not a fig tree for the fruit we eat, but a type of  Ficus aurea of which this one does have a type of fruit that animals and birds eat, but not humans. Birds drop or deposit seeds in a living tree. The seeds first germinate in the tree like an epiphyte until the roots grow down to the grown. Then a real tree starts growing around the host tree until it eventually chokes it to death. My host tree still has one living limb with green leaves. After the host tree dies, then in years rots away, some of the strangler figs collapse for lack of support. They also share an interesting mutualism with the fig wasp, another story!   🙂

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Magnificent Hummingbird Female

Magnificent Hummingbird Female
Though it could be a Female Ruby-throated – Female harder to identify
Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica

Magnificent Hummingbird Female
Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica

This is right off my Terrace, which is what I’m calling my balcony now. I love this flower, which my gardener surprised me with, and the hummingbirds love it too! 

My Birds of Costa Rica Photo Gallery has all my hummingbird photos together in a sub-gallery.  
Did you know that a hummingbird eats about 60 time its weight each day? Of course he only weighs as much as a quarter (U.S. currency 25¢ piece)!   🙂

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Visited New Mall Yesterday

While on business in Alajuela yesterday, I met a Tico friend there and we looked around the new mall. Some photos:

They claim it is 80% finished or maybe occupied, but did not look it to me.

You cannot drive up to front entrance yet because road is not finished! 
The entrance road coming soon!?
The street in front is bumper to bumper cars!
But they are widening it, in time. 🙂

Some Chinese tourists get photos
in front of one of many Christmas trees!

Once I got past this entrance tree I somehow forgot to make any more photos. So I will show the inside the mall another time! It is very large with stores for about anything you could possibly want. The prices were not as bad as I expected, but still expensive. The food court is large and has a good variety, but my friend wanted Taco Bell, so we did! (Somehow it seems wrong eating American Fast Food in another country!) But it was good, even though they serve french fries with every combo! ???

Today, Friday, I spent 4 hours from 7-11 at the Feria (Farmers’ Market) trying to get people to take an angel from our Su Espacio Angel Tree. We gave out 24 and still have nearly 50 left with only one week left to get sponsors. David thinks they will go fast this week. If some are not taken, we have plenty of money to buy gifts for them, BUT someone has to go shopping for them! We’ll see what happens. I may get another job. 

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Simple Pleasure 4: “Mi Patio”

Mi Patio is simply Spanish for “My Yard.” It is more than just my flower garden. Only 4 shots:

I do selective pruning to keep my garden art bird visible.
It is so full now that a major pruning will be needed by Dec. or Jan.

Coming in from the driveway.

Front yard from my terrace.

Terrace view of the Guarumo (Cecropia) Tree which has really grown! 

My yard is truly a constant “simple pleasure” that I enjoy all the time I’m at home. Living in the country or in a forest, next to a national park was always a temptation to be in true wildness all the time, but it would require a 4WD vehicle in most cases, be further from healthcare when needed, and shopping which I could handle the easiest, and further from people, especially those who speak English which I also would like in some ways when my Spanish is better, BUT . . . I think this is the best of both worlds and I am in a small country town. I just need this particular simple pleasure of a garden yard to have nature around me. And a very comfortable house!  🙂

And there is always cut flowers for inside!
🙂

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.~Luther Burbank

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Simple Pleasure 3: Sidewalk Cafe at Coopeatenas

At the entrance to my favorite Supermercado is this little sidewalk cafe
for excellent coffee & pastries (Banana Nut Bread my favorite) and
the best deal on ice cream in town! Half the price of POPS Ice Cream Shop.
That’s my coffee and carrot cake at the first table with my shopping bags.
I walk to here and mostly walk home, unless big load/rain, then a taxi
Coopeatenas is the farmers’ cooperative super market & farm store out back

And fun, friendly Ticas behind the counter with Santa on the Cash Register!
Helados is ice cream. They have sandwiches too! And Gourmet Coffee!
Many of their bakery items are from Crema y Nata, my favorite bakery.

And that cash register sign says in literal English translation: 

order, cancel, and remove your order here

Of course you know that “cancel” means “pay” and “remove” is like “pick up”
This same sign is in most “fast food” restaurants, called “cafetería” here.

“I wish I could show you the little village where I was born. It’s so lovely there…I used to think it too small to spend a life in, but now I’m not so sure.” ― Mary Kelly

Yep! That’s me! I was born in Warren, Arkansas, a small farming town like Atenas, Costa Rica and never thought I would ever live there again! Now I do sorta – well, here it’s coffee instead of tomato farms and Alajuela Province is a lot different from Arkansas and Costa Rica is another world from the states. But I do live in a small town again!  🙂

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“We’ve got to love loving and not love hating . . .”

The best response to the atrocity in Paris I have heard is an indirect quote supposedly said by a survivor of the massacre who said something like:

We’ve got to love loving and not love hating . . .

How like Jesus that sounds! Recently a friend told me she was terrified of anyone wearing middle eastern clothing, male or female. My response was that she desperately needs to make friends with someone who is a Muslim. They are not all terrorists! Some of the most wonderful people I have known are Muslim. I believe their theology is wrong and that they need to see Jesus in a new way, but they are still people God loves and Jesus told us to love them!

One American response to Paris will be to buy bigger and better guns and demand that they be allowed to carry them everywhere. Some will even store vast quantities of food in a basement or storm shelter. In my opinion, that is not the kind of hope a Christian has. Jesus told us that BEFORE end times, the world would be full of wars and rumors of war. And we’ve read the Bible; we know how it ends! Our hope is in Him, not guns, money, military, politics, or in hating.

So my simple response to the Paris terrorism is: We need to start loving people more, especially our enemies as Jesus taught, that is the only way our world will change. Possibly the biggest danger from events like this is that we begin to love hating people – bad people, people who did this, people who look like the ones who did it, who dress like them, who have middle eastern names, etc. When we love hating – we do as much harm to our world as the rascals who killed people in Paris. So my prayer is that all who call themselves Christian will react to the horrible events of Friday by “falling in love” with the act of loving people, all people!    -Charlie

Jesus in 1 John 3:15The Message (MSG)
The way we know we’ve been transferred from death to life is that we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who doesn’t love is as good as dead. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know very well that eternal life and murder don’t go together.
–
Jesus in Matthew 5:21-22The Message (MSG)
“You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. 

Disclaimer/credit for quote: I did not see/hear the interview in which a survivor supposedly said the above quote I am using, but heard it in the down-streaming sermon by Frank Lewis of First Baptist Nashville today, Sunday, 15 November 2015. He also used Scripture about the end times from Mark 13-14 and 2 Tim. 4:5.  I hope he approves of my giving further life to this one idea in his sermon, or as I interpreted it. 

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Simple Pleasures 2: Walking Around Atenas

Walking in Atenas means new flowers almost daily – all kinds!
A type of morning glory that just started blooming on one route.

The temptation to get a car, motorcycle or bicycle comes and goes and hit me hard when we discovered a bone spur on my heel, but walking is still safer, more pleasant, and I see so much more!

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Simple Pleasures 1: Thursday Night Dinner

I’ve been eating on the front porch lately, watching the world go by!
My old favorite was the side garden porch & inside you smell fresh bread!
So wherever you sit you will find enjoyable food! Buen Provecho!

Thursday night from 5-7 is my second Spanish class at Iglesia Biblica, just a half block from one of my favorite restaurants, El Balcon del Cafe, so . . . I started going an hour early for a very early dinner or late lunch at 4:00 with usually the day’s special. The couple who run this place are German but only a few items on the menu are German, and it is all very good! They are also a bakery with some of the best fresh bread and cakes in town, maybe tied with my other favorite bakery, Crema y Nata.

One of my two favorite fish plates in town is here a wonderful whole Corvina (Sea Bass) smothered in a white wine sauce that makes the fish melt in your mouth. And my favorite dessert here or maybe anywhere in town is her Queque Manzana con Helado (Apple Pie Alamode).

Her daily specials are usually gourmet recipes and always healthy, with or without a fruit bebida (drink). Tonight’s was an absolutely delicious steak or special cut of beef (beef not served much here) with her special German pan-fried potatoes and one of her scrumptious salads! No need for dessert tonight! I look forward to Thursday evenings and the surprise gourmet dinner before Spanish Class. One of the many simple pleasures I enjoy in Costa Rica.

Buen Provecho! The equivalent to the English “enjoy your meal!” or the French “bon appétit!” And believe me! I enjoy most of my meals here! For a light lunch snack I had some of my homemade guacamole with plantain chips to carry me over to dinner. My guacamole is from local fresh avocados and other veggies (I add fresh squeezed lime juice, onions, peppers, herbs, and tomatoes) and it is actually another one of my “Simple Pleasures.”  As is my usual breakfast of a bowl of 4-5 fruits with whole-grain cereal and nuts.   🙂 Charlie

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.~George Bernard Shaw (1856 –1950) 

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Disgustingly Like the States (Christmas before Halloween!)

Walmart (photo) and other stores started Christmas promotion in October!

Like in so many developing nations, it is the commercial world that is most “up to date” or more “developed” or shows more “progress.” That has mixed advantages and disadvantages. Like Alajuela’s infrastructure (especially streets) is simply not ready for the biggest mall in the country! And the majority of the people cannot afford the expensive stores. It still amazes me how much the rest of the world hates the USA and yet copies it! Or should I say allows U.S. businesses to come in and change the local culture. Interesting to note that all 15 or 20 Burger Kings in Costa Rica have closed. Nada! Some investor was probably losing money. Yet all the McDonald’s and KFC’s seem to do well even with multiple Latin American fried chicken competitors opposite KFC. Likewise Coke & Pepsi do well, while some big or expensive stores depend greatly on expats along with the growing rich among Ticos. I think that will be the case of the new City Mall. Catch the quote below by a North American:

We’re not going to persuade people in the developing world to go without, but neither can we afford a planet on which everyone lives like an American. Billions more people living in suburbs and driving SUVs to shopping malls is a recipe for planetary suicide. We can’t even afford to continue that way of life ourselves.~Alex Steffen

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A New Black Witch Moth

Black Witch Moth, Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica
Inside my house on screen. I opened screen, shooed him out.

And this one is darker, though still not quite black!  🙂  And he was INSIDE my house.

Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame; Each to his passion; what’s in a name?

~Helen Hunt Jackson

And my photo galleries on:
Costa Rica Butterflies & Moths
Costa Rica Insects

Or all my Costa Rica Galleries together