My walks to town or “Central Atenas,” as they call it here, always includes passing the house of a family that plants many flowers, including a zinnia garden at least twice a year. As I walk by I often pull out my cell phone and snap a butterfly or flower. To show my appreciation of these who take the time to plant flowers, I made a little 20-page photo book of the butterflies I photographed over the last year in their garden and will take 3 copies to them as a Christmas gift once the books arrive. You can preview every page of the book for free by clicking the front cover image below or go to this address and click the word “Preview” then each page to see the next: https://www.blurb.com/b/11328129-jard-n-de-mariposas
Of course it’s in Spanish. That’s the language of Costa Rica! 🙂
Well — still slow progress on Central Park remodeling. Yesterday they were finishing up two bench type seating along the sidewalk. These seats will face the playground equipment to be added in that open dirt area. With everything in the park remodeling so far being very modern or contemporary, I can’t wait to see what swings, monkey bars and other playground equipment will look like in a contemporary style! 🙂
These latest benches will be closer to the playground for those parents who feel they must keep a close watch on the smaller children. The circular seating area beyond that will be on the other side of the radial sidewalk running from the central kiosk to the southeast corner of the park. That seating is for parents of older children maybe? Or the one who aren’t “helicopter” parents. 🙂
Building more seating for parents at the kid’s playground. Open dirt area is where playground equipment goes.
I’m again working onThe Complete Fairy Tales and Stories of Hans Christian Andersen (link to Amazon Kindle version, the translation I’m reading), a long and sometimes boring or cumbersome 1800’s book that is an unusual mix of old-fashion fairy tales, Danish history, religion or Christian pedagogy in about 200 short stories about animals and people and in the ones about just people he seems fixated on both death and young men who want to marry “above their station” and never get their true love (pauper boy falls in love with a princess, etc.). I haven’t gotten to The Little Mermaid or Frozen yet! 🙂 I haven’t liked all of his stories and prefer the ones with talking animals and nature like the one in which I found this inspirational quote the other day . . .
It’s the last two sentences of his story titled The Toad. This toad has been trying to find the proverbial “gem in his head,” going through different aspects of nature and other animals when he decides to go toward the sun . . . then the story-teller concludes with . . .
“No, the light is too intense; we do not yet have eyes that can see all the glory God has created. But maybe someday we will have such eyes. That will be the most wonderful fairy tale of all, for we ourselves will be part of it.”
~Hans Christian Andersen
“. . . all the glory God has created . . .” Sunset on Calle Barroeta, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa RicaBullfrog, Si Como No Wildlife Refuge, Manuel Antonio NP, Costa Rica
And the feature photo at the top of this post is of a Masked Tree Frog at Villa Blanca Cloud Forest Resort, San Ramon, Costa Rica. Of course neither frog is the one Andersen wrote about, but fun illustrations! 🙂
Hans Christian Andersen reminded me of another favorite quote with a similar perspective on nature . . .
“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”
Now that I finished all of the Agatha Christie books, I try different kinds of books from non-fiction to mysteries to classics and have frequently followed the advice of my younger brother, Jerry, who told me once that if you don’t enjoy a book or get something from it, why continue reading it? Even a classic!
Yesterday I completed the last of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series of mysteries and had earlier completed all of her Hercule Poirot mysteries. Plus, on my one trip to London I saw her only play, The Mousetrap, the longest running play anywhere in the world! It was great! Just like her books! 🙂
. . . lovers of stories, books and libraries – the 3 main characters in this multi-layered story of totally different people from the 1450’s all the way through 2020 and to the future in 2164, all impacted by this fictitious lost and found story by a very early Greek writer who called his story “Cloud Cuckoo Land” (in Classical Greek of course!). It touches on so many life issues and about our own future on earth that I won’t try to list them all. You move between the stories of totally different people (ages 12 to 86) affected by Cloud Cuckoo Land (the Greek novel) in Constantinople (1450’s), Bulgaria (1450’s), Idaho (1940’s to 2020), Korea (1950’s), and outer space (2164) so that like his “All the Light” book (just 2 overlapping stories) you can get confused at first (if not more so). Eventually the many complicated pieces of the puzzle start coming together and you too begin to get what all these others are getting from Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is more multi-layered than Anthony Doerr’s previous classic All the Light We Cannot See (Goodreads Reviews), but just as impactful (if not more so) and will certainly become another classic! I highly recommend both books! 🙂
Read some otherGoodreads Reviews of this NY Times best seller, Cloud Cuckoo Land. Now I will simplify my reading escapes with another Agatha Christie mystery! 🙂 Rest my simple mind which is still spinning from this read. 🙂
