At the end of Avenida 8 on the “Country Lane” part of the land is forest even though private property. As everywhere here in Costa Rica, if you look deep into the forest you see more details and colors like the orange Heliconia in the foreground of this photo and towards the back left the Red Ginger flowers. Yes, these flowers do grow wild in the forests as well as being cultivated in home gardens. Tropical Costa Rica! And even the variety of leaves and shades of green bring me joy as I continue to love forests more and more!
“In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike.”
I never get tired of photographing the hills across our little valley and just keep trying to make a different image or view of the same hills I see daily. I would prefer them without the cell phone towers, but the modern society would argue that they are absolutely necessary! 🙂 Debatable! 🙂
Not only does one create his/her own happiness but also the world in which you want to live. When I moved into this fairly new rent house it had the basic trees and shrubs but I immediately planted a garden and added other plants around the yard and that now big Cecropia tree that appears in so many of my photos.
Another one of those early plantings was a row of palms outside my two bedrooms to gain additional privacy from the street that my bedrooms face, howbeit down a steep hill through lots of other trees and flowers and my big Strangler Fig Tree. It was not only for additional privacy but for the feeling that I live in a forest as seen from any of my windows and doors. Yes – we can create our own world! That is what I was trying to show in an earlier post: My Windows – My World, and back then the above bedroom window feature photo was different with an indoor palm (at right). I have to change pot plants occasionally because this window gets minimal sunshine! 🙂
And because it also changes a lot, there’s another earlier post titled Kitchen Window View. I love being surrounded by nature, the main art in my house along with some of my nature photos.
“Nature is the art of God.”
—Dante Alighieri
My Monstera deliciosa plant provides a good habitat for the birds in my photos! 🙂
“Just remember life is all an illusion…..
it’s your creation and you can dismantle it and re-create at will.”
― Nanette Mathews
¡Pura Vida!
For more pix of my “forest house” see photo galleries: My Home Garden, or My Rent House in Roca Verde, or Vistas from My Terrace, or Vistas from Hill Above My House. Of course all of Costa Rica is my big backyard and I travel to all parts of the country about every other month in national forests, parks and reserves, so watch for reports on the blog and/or check out my big gallery where I have photos documenting more than 80 Costa Rica trips in the CR Trips sub-gallery! 🙂
An article in Tico Times on how Canada and U.S. Citizens can win one of 15 free trips to Costa Rica for 2 people each. Just write a brief article or statement on an “Essential Person” to you during the pandemic. The 15 best will be published and you get the free trip! 🙂
On the front end of the cow pasture across from my house are a couple of short, squatty trees that remind me of the acacia trees I saw in the Masai Mara and Serengeti of East Africa and I’m embarrassed that I don’t yet have the identification of these here. But all trees are worth showing photos of, named or not! 🙂
Short, squatty trees in Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica.
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
I’ve always had a wall calendar by my desk to see the current month at a glance even though appointments, etc. are on my electronic calendar. I mark only my trips on the wall calendar. And for the last few years I’ve zeroed in on calendars by the Costa Rica Nature Photographer PUCCI. The one I just bought for 2021 (feature photo) has a greater purpose than just nature, part of the price I paid goes toward planting trees in Cost Rica! It is called Árboles Mágicos and supports one of the best ways to fight Global Warming! Our trees absorb some of that carbon dioxide the fossil fuel cars are emitting and Costa Rica is already working on that, planning a future of only electric cars. And if you don’t already know, Costa Rica already has 100% clean electricity now! 🙂 The United States should be embarrassed that this little developing country is so far ahead of them! The Árboles Mágicos proposition in a one minute video en español:
Árboles Mágicos Propósito
“Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish.”
― Munia Khan
¡Pura Vida!
And for those interested in more details, this year (2020) I had Pucci’s “Backroads & Trails” Calender with photos of twelve trails/roads, eight of which I’ve been on! 🙂 I love this place!
Now here is just one month from the new 2021 calendar to show how it looks:
The November 2021 page of my calendar.
And here’s the back with all 12 month’s photos shown if you can see the small image. The majority are flowering trees.
My 12 months of tree photos on the Pucci “Arboles Mágicos” calendar.
And of course I have a Trees Gallery as a new sub-gallery of my Flora & Forest Gallery. 🙂 All photos made in Costa Rica, the most bio-diverse country in the world!
I love walking up and down my hill and the others around me, even if they leave me winded sometimes! 🙂 And when I take my camera (in addition to the cellphone) I can zoom in on things like our village church or the cows on the next hill over! It’s fun! And one of these new views is from my terrace and living room! (The feature photo) And of course these were made a few days ago with sunshine before the hurricane rains started. 🙂 Yesterday’s post of cloudiness was what I expected more of plus rains, but this hurricane did not have a lot of rain like the last one. It is partly overcast and partly sunny today.
CLICK an image to see it larger:
From My Terrace
Our Farming University Next Door
UTN Cows
Central Atenas
Some of My Hillside Vistas
“There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.” —Charlotte Eriksson
My November trip was going to be a repeat to another favorite birding location, Rancho Humo on the Tempisque River at Palo Verde National Park with the nearest town 30+ minutes away, Nicoya. It is a quiet, peaceful rural retreat with luxury rooms and meals on a ranch that still had 800 head of cattle the last time I was there. Featured photo is a White-faced Capuchin Monkey is from my one visit there. It’s a great retreat for couples, families, or anyone wanting peace and quiet in nature, plus the real draw is birds for me, with one of the heavier concentration of birds in the country, especially inland water birds and one of only 2 places here where you might see the rare Jabiru Stork. I saw just one my last visit there.
A month ago they told me they planned to reopen November 1 when our borders are open to all countries for the first time since March. The entry requirements no longer include a negative Covid19 test, but still require sufficient medical insurance, masks, social distancing, etc. But tourists aren’t storming our borders and to make it worse, the U.S. Embassy recommends not traveling here because there is a new wave of the virus here like almost everywhere else. Gloomy – especially for the tourism businesses!
Thus Rancho Humo decided to not open and I had to cancel my reservation which fortunately was not pre-paid like some hotels are requiring now. But I’m still disappointed.
I will keep busy locally with walks and photography and continue my website & photo gallery building, so still a happy retiree in Costa Rica! 🙂 And I may even have Walter (my driver) take me on a couple of Water Fall Day Trips. We will see.
I’m still booked for Arenal Observatoryfor Christmas and they are open now, so I don’t anticipate any problem there. It is listed as one of the “Birding Hot Spots” of Costa Rica and is one of my top 5 favorite lodges, so I know that Christmas will be good and in the wilderness again! 🙂 And by the way, lodges like this take extra precautions because of the pandemic to keep everything sanitized and people masked and socially distanced, plus I spend most of my time solo hiking in the wilderness, so little chance of getting the virus. And just look at what I see from my sanitized room there:
Arenal Volcano View from My Room — same room each time — I love it! 🙂
Maybe because of the big leaves, or their fast growth or even because they attract toucans and sloths – I’m not sure why – but I’ve always liked the Cecropia or Guarumo it is called here. And when their leaves dry up and fall off they become works of art in my opinion!
To find out, SEE my Cecropia-Guarumo GALLERY with several shots over the years from my garden and other places and I will in the future work on adding more photos for it. 🙂 Or if it is ALL TREES you like, I have also recently created a TREES GALLERY which you might like with tree shots from all of my Costa Rica travels – a lot! 🙂
In some cases the berries are the buds for the flower and in other cases they seem to be separate from the flower. So I snapped these two flower plants in my garden with berries right now.
And I continue to be frustrated by the difficulty of identifying many of the Skipper Butterflies. this one is patterned similar to 3 or 4 of the longtails but does not have a long tail! The white pattern is similar to some of the Poans, but none of them have the dark brown or black pattern. If anyone knows for sure the ID, I would love to label him! 🙂 Just click CONTACT on the menu to message me with the name. ¡Muchas gracias!
