Hiding the Dog Fence

My landlords who live on the hill above me have a cute little dog that kept getting lost out in the neighborhood and was in danger of being run-over. So, fence time! And about the same time they got a second small dog to keep the first one company and maybe added motivation to stay home. Well, the dog fence was right out my kitchen window across the driveway and I was dreading it. But Jean-Luc is so thoughtful that he immediately had the gardener plant morning glory vines along the fence and now it is beautiful!

It will soon be a flowering hedge

From my kitchen window

Nice!
And by the way, Costa Rica continues to become more eco-friendly as urged in this article: 
5 Tips for Helping the Planet from Costa Rica    (Hint: They help in other countries too!)

Cool Unknown Insect (NOT a spider!)

Reminds me of a very large tick, but I don’t think so. 6 legs = insect!
Please Comment if you know its name.

A different view, both shots on my terrace table.

I love insects. They are amazing.~Andrea Arnold
And that is a good thing if you live in Costa Rica!
There are more than 300,000 species of insects here!  ~Wikipedia


See also my Costa Rica Insects photo gallery  and  my Costa Rica Butterflies photo gallery

Changing Garden

 I did what I thought was pretty radical pruning of the overgrown giant Porter Weeds and some of the Overgrown Red Ginger. But my “TuttiFruti,” which had been my most colorful plant, was apparently dying. So the gardeners cut it to the ground which I would have had trouble doing, though we had been pruning it some. They also sprayed for a leaf-eating insect. If it does not come back healthy, we will pull it and plant something different on my border. But we will probably have nothing blooming along the border when Reagan visits in just 4 weeks. Sorry Reagan! Though plants fool you here and some grow really fast!

The colorful border (inset photo) was dying, maybe insects for which he sprayed, but it is cut to ground now,
hoping for a beautiful renewal or revival. If not, I’ll get a different border. But waiting is hard!  🙂

Even without the border and the heavy pruning, the garden looks okay.
The Red Ginger and Purple Petunias will always bloom, even when cut.
And also the Plumbago, though it blooms on new growth, so cutting it back diminishes blooms briefly.
And though not seen above, I am getting new blooms on my Heliconias as seen in below photos. 

The tall plant in the back of garden photo above is where
this large Heliconia sports 4 blooms right now!
This is the biggest of the four.
This smaller Heliconia by my kitchen window also has several blooms.
The other plants like it have red and orange blooms but are dormant now.
I cut back the two big Porterweeds the hummingbirds love, BUT
I still have one smaller plant blooming and attracting hummers!
Though the hummingbirds are mainly in the Yellow Bell Trees now.
And very few butterflies are around this time of year.
May-July was the most butterflies last year.
The TriqueTraque or Orange Trumpet Vine has not done well, but now that I started feeding it fertilizer I’m seeing it grow a little and getting a few flowers, so there is still hope that it will cover that big massive concrete wall in time! That’s my goal!




The Maraca blooms at the
base of a very tall plant.

Also once my Planta Maraca or Shampoo Ginger gets established, I expect to regularly have more blooms, which is more exotic to me than the heliconias! And every time we trim the Blumbago it shoots out new growth with lots of blooms, so everything will have its ups and downs but as I wanted, something is blooming year-aroung, all the time! And it is fun to watch it change, though I have learned (what I really already knew), that maintaining a garden this big and a yard with lots of flowers is a lot of work, even with a hired gardener a couple of times a month! And for any reader living here, my most constant and prolific bloomers have been the Red Ginger and Purple Petunias. And I still don’t have all the Spanish names for these flowers and that sometimes that changes depending on who I talk to or which website I check!  🙂

PURA VIDA!
EDITORIAL CORRECTION: Yesterdays post was of an unusual bug in my bathroom, I tried to call it a stick or matchstick insect, but Kevin & Charles both correctly noticed that it is/was a spider: 

It’s a spider – 8 legs
Insects have 6 legs                        THANKS KEVIN!

AND LATER: A note from Charles Parker with the same 8-leg, 6-leg story! Did I know that? 🙂

Matchstick Insect or SPIDER?

Last night on wall in my bathroom. I left him there.

This morning he had moved to my bath towel.
I removed him before my shower.  🙂

“Matchstick” is not a conclusive identification, but the closest I could find online. He is not in my books. There is also a “Stick Insect” in the dry savannas of Guanacaste, but they aren’t suppose to live here and in photos they seem to have skinnier bodies. And I don’t think it is a spider. Anyone who really knows what it is, please contact me, charlie@charliedoggett.net.

Emailed from Kevin Hunter: 
It’s a spider – 8 legs
Insects have 6 legs

THANKS KEVIN! You are right!

AND LATER: A note from Charles Parker with the same 8-leg, 6-leg story! Did I know that? 🙂

If you want to live and thrive, let the spider run alive.
~American Quaker Saying

And oh yes, I have a photo gallery of Costa Rica Insects

and separate gallery of Costa Rica Butterflies & Moths

Clean Rivers Needed Everywhere!

Sign on one of the streets I walk on
between my house and downtown.

Roughly translated, the sign in Spanish says in English:

If we want clean rivers, do not pollute.

ADECA is doing a good job in Atenas of helping people be aware of their environment and the individual’s responsibility to not polute which is a problem here like everywhere. I look forward to finding more of these signs around town, maybe for different purposes like the one I shared earlier on Trees

Very Windy Now!

See how the big Cecropia or Guarumo Tree leaves are blown hard to the left? Hard to photograph wind!
This is from one my rocking chairs on the terrace. It is not constant wind, but gusts and occasional periods of light wind.

Same shot seconds later with little or no wind. 


December and January are very windy, and though the constant sunshine ensures comfortable weather, these can be the coolest months of the year. – See more at: http://costarica.com/travel/dry-season-vs-green-season/#sthash.zyxlTX2x.dpuf

All my googling gives me no good reason for the usual December-January wind though Angelfire calls it the “trade winds” from the east (the same thing that brings rain in May-Oct.):

“The warm moist air driven westward by the trade winds loses its moisture as it crosses the cordilleras and the resulting dry air gusts down the Pacific slopes drying out everything in its path. With such low moisture content, few clouds form to block the sunshine and the prevailing winds keep Pacific breezes from bringing moisture onshore, thus, further promoting the dryness.”  -Angelfire

Or see the Wind Forecast Map of Costa Rica  (used mainly by windsurfers, kite-surfers)

COSTA RICA WEATHER IN GENERAL IS GOOD! MINE 72° YEAR-AROUND!

Although Costa Rica is a small country in terms of area, there is a lot going on here in terms of weather in Costa Rica. With a climate that is diverse and varied, Costa Rica can be divided into several climatic zones, each of which are distinct and individual. Though generally classified as a tropical country because of its close proximity to the equator, Costa Rica has no real winter period, and the sun shines here throughout the year. In general the weather can be classified as a dry or high season and a wet or green season. With over 12 hours of sunshine a day, the sun rises at about 5:45 am and sets at about 5:45 pm consistently throughout the year.
    The main reason for the diversity in Costa Rica lies in the fact that Costa Rica has an ocean and a sea relatively close to each other, the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Of course elevation does also take part in the diversity of weather as well. For example Guanacaste which is next to the Pacific Ocean has a dry climate where there are many tropical dry forests, while Tortuguero which is on the Caribbean Ocean that is only about 130 miles or 210 km away (as the crow flies) has very humid and wet weather with rain throughout much of the year.
    The Central Valley with San Jose (ATENAS) enjoys the best climate in the country as the weather here has an average of 22 degrees Celsius or 72 degrees Fahrenheit and is tempered with a cool coastal breeze. In the highlands the temperature averages 13 degree Celsius, while in the lowlands or at sea level the temperature stays at around 26 degrees Celsius or 79 degrees Fahrenheit, with hot days and sultry evenings.
    In Costa Rica the average annual temperature is around 21 to 27 degrees Celsius or 70 to 81 degrees Fahrenheit and the coolest months of the year are November, December and January. The months March through May are the hottest months of the year, so make sure you protect yourself from the sun.
    There is no real summer or winter in Costa Rica and the rainy season here lasts from May to November, with the months of December through April having little to no rain and September and October being the heaviest rain period. While the average rainfall in the country is around 100 inches, some mountainous areas get as much as 25 feet of rainfall on a yearly basis. Also remember to keep in mind as we mentioned before that Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast is rather unique and has its own microclimate. With tradewinds keeping the weather hot and humid most of the year, there is no real dry season out here and it rains very often.

Or a more succinct discussion of Costa Rica Weather at Keys to Costa Rica

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

~John Ruskin