From my garden to you with nature’s red, heart-shaped flower, the Anthurium, Anthurium andraeanum (linked to Wikipedia). It is native to Central and South America and has many common names in English such as anthurium, tailflower, flamingo flower, pigtail plant, and laceleaf. They bloom year-around in my garden and in a pot on my terrace where these photos were made.
Anthurium, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa RicaAnthurium, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
That phrase, “I don’t know,” is becoming my old-age mantra as an 84-year-old who turns 85 in just a few more months. Unlike the “Know-it-all” teen and young adult years, I continue to feel that “I don’t know” about more and more in life! 🙂
Like many my age, this old man walks into a room and asks himself, “What did I come in here for?” “I don’t know.” Then a new pain comes in a different part of my body or some other part is not functioning properly. Why? “I don’t know.” Where did I put that? “I don’t know.” Is the doctor appointment tomorrow or next week? “I don’t know.” What am I having for dinner? “I don’t know.” 🙂
Followed by deeper thoughts, like when am I going to die? “I don’t know.” When should I move to a Senior Adult home? “I don’t know.” Why did half of my home country vote for a lying, immoral, convicted criminal to be their president? “I don’t know.”
With all of these doubts and multiple health problems I have now, why am I still happy? “I don’t know.” Maybe it is because of this mantra of accepting that in life there is so much that “I don’t know.”🙂
Socrates famously observed, “I know one thing, that I know nothing.”
He also said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
And finally he said, “The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less”
My Costa Rican gardener has always called this flowering shrub “Once de Abril” as a local name honoring our one war hero who fought off the North American Rebels trying to turn Central America into another slave state in the 1800’s. Thanks to Google Lens & iNaturalist, I’ve discovered that it is “officially” . . .
Duranta erecta, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Scientific Name = Duranta erecta
Common Names in English
Golden Dewdrop
Pigeon Berry
Skyflower
Nombres comunes en español
Coralillo (iNaturalist CR)
Tala blanco (en Argentina)
Flor celeste
Fruta de iguana (I like this because my iguanas eat those yellow berries) 🙂
So there you have it for all the “official” names I could find! 🙂 Which like pretty much everything in nature, the only sure name is the scientific name and sometimes even that changes! 🙂
Our January 7 day trip with 6 Canadian friends from British Columbia to Rio Tarcoles & Punta Leona Beach was a fun trip with lots of nature photo ops! And I now have the “Trip Gallery” finished! Click that link or the image of the first page below or this web address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2025-January-7-Rio-Tarcoles-Punta-Leona In many ways, these trip galleries are my “base galleries” from which I glean photos for subject galleries like Birds! While photos made in my home garden go directly into the subject galleries if they even make a gallery. 🙂 But I love these trip galleries because I always make more photos on a trip!
CLICK this image of the first page to go to this gallery.
¡Pura Vida!
My needle biopsy went well yesterday and now I just wait for their report that I will receive in my February 12 appointment. And my sister Bonnie learned that her “colon cancer” was primarily an ovarian cancer that spread to her colon, and now they are about to begin chemotherapy after one more procedure. Our mother and brother both died of cancer and now it looks like the rest of us may go the same way. Only Dad never had cancer. The doctors said he died when his heart just stopped, not a heart attack. And Bonnie and I will both look for the positive while we fight our different types of cancers. Thanks for your prayers!
Carter was the best U.S. President during my lifetime and I miss having someone who is honest and intelligent like him in leadership, especially with Trump being the complete opposite in almost every way.
Like me, Carter grew up in the rural south as a Southern Baptist back when Southern Baptists used to follow Christ. Also like me, he disassociated himself from Baptists and other Evangelicals when they quit following Christ and became a power-hungry, controlling, political movement. It hurts me when people say ” He was a good man but not a good president.” He was actually a great president (Nobel Peace Prize), accomplishing a lot! Some of which the crooked Reagan tried to take credit for. He never lied to the people while Trump has never told the truth, and yet half of the U.S. voted that convicted criminal back into office. I will mourn the loss of Jimmy Carter and as I will the destruction of the next four years in the states, while continuing to be thankful for my 2014 decision to move to Costa Rica! 🙂 I love my new country! 🙂
I hope you will continue to be one of the thousand or so people who read my nature blog and find peace in God’s creations regardless what is happening elsewhere in the world!
¡Pura Vida!
And hopefully by tomorrow I will have some of the photos processed from yesterday’s safari on Rio Tarcoles! 🙂 I am busy again today with a doctor’s appointment in San Jose to evaluate the sonogram of my neck as they continue to monitor for possible spread of cancer. Thanks for your prayers.
These photos are from my kind of “catch all” category that I call “Leaves and Nature Things.” In this case, all leaves with one whole tree on the hill above my house. Tomorrow will start January pix and tomorrow is when I’m taking some Canadian friends birding on the Tarcoles River early, then looking for monkeys on Punta Leona Beaches with Walter. A full day, so those pix won’t be until at least the next day or later but coming! 🙂 Then Wednesday I go see the doctor in San Jose who is monitoring the possible spread of my facial cancer. And another morning will be given to visiting Dan Sheaks’ bird feeders where he gets a lot of toucans! So a busy week again! 🙂
This photo from my terrace was made on December 16, so maybe by now those few little gray rain clouds have already disappeared from our skies here. 🙂
December 16 vista from my terrace.
The “Rainy Season” which is sometimes called “Winter” (el invierno) here is generally from May to November, but there can be an overlap of rainy and dry seasons in December with pretty much no rain from January through March or April called “Summer” (el verano) here and then in late April or May the rain starts again to keep beautiful Costa Rica green! (With climate change we’ve had a lot more rain this December!) And that description above is mainly for the Central Valley or center of this little country with both coasts, coastal lowlands, and a few internal low areas called rainforests have rain year around as do some of the cloud forests high in the mountains.
And then there is the northwest part of the country, called Guanacaste (that province name), which is dry most all year with some deserts and only a few really wet areas like Palo Verde NP or Rincón de la Vieja. So if you don’t like the weather one place, go somewhere else! 🙂
Plus a little interesting trivia is that here in the Central Valley our two rainiest or wettest months are usually September & October while the year-around wet and rainy Caribbean Coast has their least amount of rain during those two months. Thus I usually travel to the Caribbean side in September or October! 🙂 But it’s not the same on the mid & south Pacific Coast which can have rain year around like the Caribbean. 🙂
CLICK IMAGE ABOVE to go to the report or click address below (assuming they allow non-members in). AND YES! All those photos in the montage above are ones I submitted to iNaturalist. Their A-I work I guess. 🙂
The above-linked report includes lots of data, graphs, and the actual photos or you can go to My Observations page (linked) to just see which ones I submitted. Just beginning!
I have for 10+ years submitted my bird observations to eBird and in the last 2 or 3 years my butterfly observations to butterfliesandmoths.org, but in May of 2024 I started submitting all of my nature photos to iNaturalist Costa Rica (en español, Naturalista Costa Rica) including the birds and butterflies (double reporting them). 🙂 Though plants are included in iNaturalist, right now I’m only submitting the unusual ones or ones that I need help identifying! 🙂 My online gallery and website/blog will disappear after my death, but photos I submit to these organizations will be there for posterity! 🙂 Maybe that will be my legacy? 🙂
