Category: Nature

My profession is to always find God in nature.

– Henry David Thoreau

Posted on

Sun Setting on 2018 & My Celebration Begins!

The above photo is one of my sunsets at Manuel Antonio National Park in 2015, my first year here! I go back to celebrate 4 years living here! Photographing new birds and other animals, walking forest trails and one of the most beautiful beaches in Costa Rica, getting one or more relaxation massages, and eating gourmet food every day for a week as I create more Costa Rica Nature Photos! That is my kind of Christmas Celebration and I anticipate a fabulous week! Here’s one of the resort’s several videos:

Or browse the Si Como No Website   —   This is living!   🙂

3-toed Sloth I photographed there in 2015.

Retired in Costa Rica 4 Years Christmas Celebration

Starts Tomorrow, 21 December 2018

¡Pura Vida!

Posted on

Is the Color of Christmas Red?

Last year after Christmas I took the potted Poinsettia I had had inside and planted it in my garden. When I recently asked my gardeners to “thin out” my garden, well . . . they really thinned it out including the removal of my poinsettia which was not doing well anyway.

So today I looked for another poinsettia in town and found only one little plant store that had any and they were expensive, but I got two anyway. They add to the “Christmas Spirit” around my house and I already had in mind putting them immediately in my garden, which I did. Well, the rain seems to have stopped (we might get 1 or 2 more) and the wind has started blowing (think March in the states). The petals or really leaves on the poinsettia are be thrashed by the wind and already look weathered.

Oh well, I meant well and in my thinned out garden there is not much color now, so they have been added to my two other now-blooming red flowers: Red Ginger and Torch Ginger or in Costa Rica El bastón de emperador. So maybe all this red in my gardens is my Christmas color for this year!   🙂

 

See the Photo Gallery of My Home Gardens for more of my flowers and they’re not all red!   🙂

 

“What is the colour of Christmas?  Red? 

The red of the toyshops on a dark winter’s afternoon,
Of Father Christmas and the robin’s breast?
Or green?
Green of holly and spruce and mistletoe in the house,
dark shadow of summer in leafless winter?
One might plainly add a romance of white,
fields of frost and snow;
thus white, green, red- reducing the event to the level of a Chianti bottle. 
But many will say that the significant colour is gold,
gold of fire and treasure, of light in the winter dark; and this gets closer, 
For the true colour of Christmas is Black.
Black of winter, black of night, black of frost and of the east wind,
black of dangerous shadows beyond the firelight.

― William Sansom

¡Feliz Navidad!

Posted on

The Gringo’s Hawk

Excellent first person account of living in the earlier, wilder Costa Rica as a twenty-something, then adapting and growing older here. Especially good for nature-lovers like me as a “Retired in Costa Rica” senior adult blogging about it at charliedoggett dot net. ¡Pura Vida!

—      Goodreads Review by Charlie Doggett

And I read the real book on paper! It is not available digitally for my Kindle. Thanks to a friend here in Atenas who loaned the book!

Posted on

Merry Christmas!

Keel-billed Toucan visiting for breakfast – my home terrace one morning.

HAPPY, HAPPY – – – to you and your family, friends, and communities this Christmas! While some of you enjoy a White Christmas, I will be enjoying the beaches and rainforests of Manuel Antonio National Park and the private Wildlife Refuge of Si Como No Resort there.   – – – HAPPY, HAPPY!    🙂

¡Pura Vida!

Posted on

Untamed Costa Rica

National Geographic has been producing a series of 5 minute videos, first about wildlife in the states, now on much of Costa Rica’s wildlife called “Untamed Costa Rica” for use on their TV Channel and available online at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/untamed/

Wow! I just watched the first in the series about the negative relationship between the Olive Ridley Turtle and the Jaguar in northern Guanacaste at the Santa Rosa National Park here. I’ve bookmarked the website and will watch episode 2 soon which is about hummingbirds.

If you love nature but are short on time, a 5 minute nature fix may be just what you need! Give it a try!

Or come visit one of our hundreds of parks and reserves for a live nature fix here! Costa Rica is truly THE PLACE for Nature Lovers!

 

 

And here’s a 2 minute intro to the young dudes making these videos. They started first in the USA as shown in this intro:

And the Tico Times Newspaper article introducing Untamed Costa Rica to me is at:

http://www.ticotimes.net/2018/12/01/national-geographic-highlights-costa-rica-in-untamed-series

¡Pura Vida!

And oh yes, this month Costa Rica Celebrates 70 Years Without an Army!     🙂

Posted on

New “Murals Parking Lot”

Earlier I showed a photo of one side that was being painted as a mural, but had no idea it would become like this and it appears to be nearly finished. Click an image to see it larger and/or start a manual slide show:

Atenas is a small rural town where people expect to park on the street, but as it has grown and gained a lot of rich foreigners with multiple cars, parking lots are becoming necessary, though people everywhere are slow to adapt. This colorful place to park should help those not wanting to change and pay to park. It is colorful like our beautiful little town. See also the “old town” in the video below in the right column, titled “Atenas: Best Weather in the World.”  A cool place to live!

¡Pura Vida!

 

Posted on

Two Gifts This Morning

I opened two gifts this morning – my eyes.

 

Photo is of a Caribe sunrise, Hotel Banana Azul,

Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica.

¡Pura Vida!

 

My prayers go to the Bush Family in their loss . . .

. . . a truly great & humble man!

George H. W. Bush

Humility is not thinking less of yourself,

it’s thinking of yourself less.

~C. S. Lewis

REPORT ON MY BIOPSY:  After removing the 10 stitches from my arm (where all that cancer was confirmed removed) and the two stitches from my face for the biopsy, Dr. Gamboa gave me the facial biopsy report:

In brief, it says I have another carcinoma cancer on my face which is a smaller and slower growing type than the one on my arm. No problem waiting until January to remove the rest of it (the biopsy took most of it). Because of the delicate and thinner skin location next to my eye, we will be doing a more complicated and more efficient (more expensive) “Mohs Surgery” with two doctors doing it with a pathologist standing by to make sure they get all of the cancer as he examines each layer as removed (continuous biopsy). It will not be in his office this time but in a clinic, hospital-like, operating room, but still out-patient. He is checking on availability of other doctor and the clinic for the week of 21 January – after my Boca Tapada trip.  Remember —  the doctors work around my trips!  🙂    Important! That is where I sleep in a tree house 5 nights!

Dr. Gamboa also “PRESCRIBED” wearing a wide-brim hat instead of the ball caps I’ve been wearing and of course sunscreen every day when out. I sure love sunny Costa Rica, just 673 miles north of the equator, but with the value of the sun also comes with some potential dangers for someone like me who loves the outdoors. I have already become more careful, even though the doc says these current growths and cancers were probably caused by sun I got as a child or teen, more sun now can make it worse, so I must be cautious.

¡Still Pura Vida!    🙂

Posted on

Remodeling Central Park

It is difficult to figure out everything they are doing or why they went 2 weeks doing nothing, but now they seem to be lowering the central portion where the band shell or gazebo will go -quite a bit lower – possibly for a good foundation. And now I can see that the square-block park was not as level all the way across as I thought. Possibly they will level it. Now they are removing dump trucks full of dirt from the center.

Taking many dump truck loads of dirt from the center of park.

 

On the right side it appears to be 3 to 4 feet lower than surrounding land.

 

See my original post on Remodeling Central Park    (architect drawings)

Or go to Government Park Remodel Page   (architect drawings)

¡Pura Vida Atenas!

 

Yep! I missed a couple of days posting anything. Always busy with daily chores and necessary trips to town and I have also been busy adding content to this website. I’ll tell you about that in the next couple of days’ posts. Exciting Stories!

Posted on

Atenas Teens Paint Sidewalks for Environmental Awareness

The other day I came across this youth group painting an environmental message on the sidewalk at one of the busiest corners in Atenas Central in front of a furniture store, across the street from Mercado Central and across another street from our University Extension campus.

Everything can have another life: RECYCLE

They are painting messages on several well-traveled sidewalk corners in town too create ecological awareness (conciencias de ecologica) or awareness of global warming (conciencias de calentamiento global) for the people of Atenas. The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow and their actions speak well for our future.

Atenas Youth Create Ecological Awareness

 

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

—Margaret Mead

 

Earth University

People from around the world study ecology at Costa Rica’s Earth University   people who are changing the world for good (link is to English Language site)

Also a visitor’s English-Language Report on Costa Rica’s Earth University

 

¡Pura Vida!

Posted on

Spring in the Tropics!

Yes, it’s “Spring” here (la primavera) and almost the beginning of “Summer” (el verano) or Dry Season which starts in December. There are some trees and flowers that bloom this time of year while other bloom at the end of dry season and I can’t explain why because I don’t know.  🙂

I call these my “Yellow Bell Trees” because the flowers are bell-shaped, but that is not the name of them and I can’t seem to get an agreement here on what their English name is. I recently lost two of these trees, so less yellow this year in my garden, but it calls for a Haiku anyway:

¡Pura Vida!