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Yesterday it was afternoon before looking for something to photograph. The morning blue sky and fluffy white clouds were gone, so I looked up the other direction behind my house, up the hill where others live and to the beauty of their gardens above my Monstera seen below! 🙂
“Look up on high, and thank the God of all.”
~Geoffrey Chaucer
Here’s the 4 shots of LOOKING UP at nature from my garden!
Continue reading “Looking Up!”
In many ways, YES! And in more than one place I have used the following Tolkien quote in relation to my nearly 7 years of continuous exploring the most magical place on earth to me – Costa Rica!
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
-J.R.R Tolkien
I just finished the Wingfeather Saga of four books where Andrew Peterson created his own imaginary world called “Aerwiar” and, like Tolkien before him, created this imaginary world before he wrote all the stories so that the places helped shape the stories. I don’t know if Lewis created Narnia before his stories, but as a best friend to Tolkien, he probably did! 🙂 And I can assure you that Costa Rica was created long before me and shapes all of my stories! 🙂
The Wingfeather Saga started off a little slow but ended with a powerful impact on me and probably most other readers. The many places within his world of “Aerwiar” not only influenced his story but also how we the readers react to it. You can easily say the same thing about Narnia and of course the most powerful sense of place in the make-believe world remains Tolkien’s “Middle-earth” that people still study and the fantasy of it keeps readers coming back for more!
But to me, the best fantasyland of them all is the real country of Costa Rica! It has greatly influenced not only my blog reported adventures here but how I’m living my new “pura vida” daily life in Costa Rica. In some ways I’ve tackled this country the way the Hobbit Frodo approached Middle-earth and how those children approached Narnia & Aerwiar; all with a sense of awe, adventure and purpose! I think it’s the way to approach all of life, wherever one lives! I just think it’s easier in a magical place like Costa Rica! 🙂
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.
Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
~Roald Dahl
My Magical Place is Costa Rica!
¡Pura Vida!
My constant urge to be creating something led me to doing a second “Lay Flat” Book with Blurb.com which simply means a thicker book with pages glued together so that there are no gutters between pages, making it idea for horizontal landscapes across two pages. I did one back in 2018 titled Costa Rica Sunrises and Sunsets. I think it is nice! And this one focuses on landscapes with only 4 sunrise/sunsets in it. 🙂 40 pages, 23 photos.
Check out the free preview at: https://www.blurb.com/b/10831231-a-voyage-of-discovery or click the cover image:
And if you are wondering about that title, it comes from a quote that I put on the back cover of the book:
“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
~Marcel Proust
¡Pura Vida!
NOT business for me! So maybe “Calling” Card is a better name? 🙂 It’s my easy way of sharing my contact information.
The one I’ve used for years had one of my Keel-billed Toucan photos on it and I have been in the “Red-eyed Tree Frog Mood” for awhile now, so decided to change to this shot from Danta Corcovado Lodge 2018 that I used on my Christmas Card last year. I order these cards fairly cheap online from VistaPrints. None of my contact info has changed, just the look:
Calling card image – part of the tropical magic of Costa Rica! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness;
Psalm 7:17
I will sing the praises of the name of the Lord Most High.
This Spanish name of what English-speakers call “Torch Ginger” flower, “El bastón del emperador” has stuck with me from my first hearing of it. The English translation is “The Emperor’s staff” (or king’s scepter). And since most of the time I have at least one blooming in my gardens, it is a reminder of who my king is and my early pledges to follow Jesus as my life guide, ruler and “King” if you please. And what better “scepter or staff” for Him than a beautiful tropical flower! 🙂 Here’s the one blooming this weekend:
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.For the Lord is the great God,
Psalm 95:1-3
the great King above all gods
¡Pura Vida!
“Land really is the best art.”
—Andy Warhol
“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”
– John Muir
¡Pura Vida!
The four photos today were made on the last two mornings, 2-each, from my terrace of some of the hills surrounding Atenas Pueblo in Alajuela Province, Costa Rica. You can see more of my Terrace Vistas in that linked gallery or go for all the many different CR Vistas. 🙂
Sometimes it is fun to look for something different as I walk through my garden, and yesterday I was looking for shapes, patterns or textures. Naturally, with different imaginations we all see different things, whether it be in the clouds or the plants! 🙂 So see what shapes, patterns or textures you find in these plant photos . . . (share in Comments if you wish) 🙂
Continue reading “Imagining Shapes in the Garden”
In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.
~Aaron Rose
🙂
When I searched my old photos, all made before moving to Costa Rica in 2014, I quickly chose 125 photos without even going through all and decided to stop looking. Then I made cuts down to 40 photos that had “the right light” and I considered “extraordinary” and still too many! 🙂 I arbitrarily told myself “No more than 20!” (hopefully fewer) and the last cuts were the most difficult! 🙂 So forgive me for doing a post with 20 photos, but the chosen ones are all below in a gallery where you can click an image to see it larger. The feature photo in the header is my favorite Clouded Leopard shot from Nashville Zoo and this sample below for the email recipients (who have to click “Read More” to continue) is one of many extraordinary shots from 2 safaris in the Masai Mara . And these are not necessarily favorites but seem to fit in these two locations. 🙂
One of the other blogs I’ve encountered because of their “like” of mine was “The Compulsive Gardener” who copied another blog’s “Six on Saturday” garden blogging phenomena with her own “Six on Saturday–A Flurry of Flowers.” If you want to learn more, go to the originator’s blog: The Propagator. Or to his 6 on Sat collection and Participant Guide. I don’t plan to do this every Saturday, but thought it would be fun to do it at least one time to help propagate the idea! 🙂 And ohhh, is it hard to limit myself to just 6! 🙂 But here is 6 of my favorite from My Garden Gallery:
You may not know that my favorite kind of books or stories are the ones written partly for children or maybe it is “the young at heart!” JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and JK Rowling. I was about to start re-reading Tolkien (the most difficult of the above) when through the sharing of friends in the Goodreads club/blog I discovered The WingFeather Saga (link to author’s description of the books). They are children’s books in this general fantasy/adventure style of the above three mentioned authors, with it quickly obvious that the author, Andrew Peterson, admires CS Lewis the most and would like to create a Narnia.
