Category: Garden

Both my gardens and ones I visit

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Indigenous Meditation?

Ever since the gardeners broke my fragile pottery bird in my garden I have intended to replace it with a more substantial or concrete art and finally did that this week. This particular meditating indigenous man statue is one I’ve seen in some of the lodges I visit and liked, but not available in Atenas or even in the viveros (plant nurseries) of La Garita. My gardener sent me to an outdoor arts business on the outskirts of Naranjo de Alajuela and there I found depictions of the indigenous people of Costa Rica.

I haven’t found out yet if he is intended to be “the thinker” or someone in “some kind of meditation,” but the art style (copied of course) is similar to the Pre-Columbian Diquís Culture statues as a part of the Meso-American Pacific Culture. I like it and think it adds a touch of calm and history or maybe even spirituality to my garden. It is made of concrete, thus not as likely to be broken! 🙂

Pre-Columbian Meso-American Style Statue, Costa Rica
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Green

The response to yesterday’s blog post “Verdure” has been good and of course that older English word refers to the “green” in nature. One response caused me to look up quotes about “green in nature” and there were so many good ones! I limited myself to sharing just three:

“For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green.”

– J. R. R. Tolkien

“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.”

– Pedro Calderon de la Barca

 “Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions.”

– John Muir
Fern

¡Pura Vida!

🙂

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Verdure

Verdure = the fresh green color of vegetation.

Verdure
Hugging me
Daily

Upon
My terrace
Fresh, Green
Seeing
The garden
Colors
Feeling
The Garden 
Tranquil

“To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”

—Jane Austen

¡Pura Vida!

More CR Nature Haiku

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Two-barred Flasher Butterfly

This is my second sighting of this bright turquoise fellow, this time INSIDE my house! There are better photos made in the garden this same time of year, two years ago in my Two-barred Flasher Gallery. Here’s two cellphone shots of one on my kitchen counter.

Two-barred Flasher
Two-barred Flasher

¡Pura Vida!

See all my Costa Rica Butterflies Galleries, 130+ species.

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The Hobbit Re-read

“I’m going on an adventure!”  said Bilbo Baggins

~JRR Tolkien in The Hobbit

Only great books deserve “re-reading” and The Hobbit (Wikipedia link), the 1937 published book by JRR Tolkien, is certainly one of those! I just finished reading it again on my Kindle and of course discovered “new stuff” not in my memory! He pretty much introduces a new character or creature in every chapter and then brings them all back together for the epic “Battle of Five Armies” at the end of the story.

Cover of The Hobbit on Kindle.

I will not write a full or formal review but just share some first impressions and personal feelings on the re-read of a favorite book, which I followed by a re-watch of the 3-movies version of the book . . .

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Park Renovation Continues

Soon after the Covid Pandemic started in March of 2020 the regular work on renovating the Central Park of Atenas slowed and then stopped in October 2020. I don’t know, but guessing they ran out of money or the pandemic caused a reduction of tax income or something like that for the city. There has been no work on the park renovation for more than a year. Well, this week it started up again!

First I noticed the tin fence around a small triangle of the park between two sidewalks at the corner opposite Olivera Pizza and between the City Hall and Banco Nacional.

View across old park while standing in street in front of Banco Nacional or the North side of park.

As I walked around the fence to see what was going on inside the fence, I stopped at the very Northwest corner of park opposite Olivera Pizza:

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My Burning Bush

“Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees takes off his shoes.”

~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

It’s just a Croton Plant in my yard, one of many and in one of the many colors that Crotons come in, most multi-colored. But for some reason the other afternoon when it wasn’t raining and a ray of sunlight hit it. I saw a “burning bush!” Maybe I should remove my shoes more often! 🙂 And thanks to Elizabeth Browning’s thought, I will continue seeing “every common bush afire with God,” and other parts of earth also, where God waits for us to notice. 🙂

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Variable Cracker Butterfly

A first for my garden, seen on the trunk of a small palm tree. This “strange” butterfly is very much like the Guatemalan Cracker, with the latter having 2 blue rings instead of one. I have photographed 3 species of the Crackers, seen in my CR Butterflies Galleries: The Gray Cracker in Nicaragua, the Guatemalan Cracker at Corcovado NP Costa Rica, and now my third, the Variable Cracker in my Garden, Atenas, Alajuela Province yesterday. 🙂 More photos are in the gallery linked above.

Variable Cracker, Hamadryas feronia

“If you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day.”

~John Archibald Wheeler

🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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TRIP GALLERY is Ready

Because I wasn’t running around on my usual side-trips this past week (in my over-80 slow mode now) 🙂 I got started on and have now finished the “CR TRIP GALLERY” for this 2021 Banana Azul Caribe South week (link is to the gallery).

There’s a lot more to photograph when not leaving a hotel than I thought. Now granted, there are fewer photos of birds and other wildlife and none from national parks, wildlife refuges, waterfalls, indigenous reserves, or wildlife rescue centers (all of which I’ve “toured” from this very hotel in the past). This week became my “quiet mode” focus. I just stayed put and photographed the little things in nature all around me on the hotel grounds, plus some fun shots from the small plane flight there! There are 9 sub-galleries! 🙂 Just click the first page of the gallery below and ENJOY! 🙂

CLICK above image to go to the gallery.

“Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.”

– Ansel Adams

¡Pura Vida!

And if you are interested in some of those great “side-trips” I’ve made from this same hotel, check out the galleries from other trips to South Caribe:

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