Category: Nature

My profession is to always find God in nature.

– Henry David Thoreau

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ZooAVE and Zoo of a Dinner

We visited Zoo Ave in La Garita today with Abe and Nancy Docktar and then joined Jean and Carolyn for dinner tonight at a local gringo restaurant with a Nashville Band (of retired gringos here) called “FlashBack” playing oldies. An Interesting day!
Flash Back plays for dancing at Augostos Restaurant tonight
Scarlet Macaw at Zoo Ave
Keel-billed Toucan at Zoo Ave
An Injured Toucan rescued and nursed to health
Green Iguana, one of many around the park
Wild Spectacled Owl visiting Zoo Ave
Striped Owl at Zoo Ave
Crested Owl at Zoo Ave
Emu at Zoo Ave
Great Curassow Male at Zoo Ave
Great Curassow Female at Zoo Ave
Squirrel Monkey at Zoo Ave
Spider Monkey at Zoo Ave
Helicopter Damselfly at Zoo Ave
Baird’s Tapir or Central American Tapir at Zoo Ave

Zoo animals are ambassadors for their cousins in the wild.~Jack Hanna

IMPORTANT NOTE: In 2020 this facility has been “rebranded” to eliminate the zoo concept and is now called Rescate Wildlife Rescue Center.

Follow Reagan’s Blog for his view of his visit here!

¡Pura Vida!
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Staying Local Today!

We started today after breakfast with a visit to the Feria or Farmers’ Market. See my photos from earlier post or how I use fresh fruits in an earlier post. The Feria is always a place my visitors want to see even if we don’t purchase anything.

The little Railroad Museum is nearby, so we went by it to make sure I knew how to get there Sunday afternoon which is the only time it is open. So some snaps of it before . . .

Ice cream at POPS, then we hang out at home rest of today.

And have dinner at a neighbor’s house nearby, Richard next door. It was really nice! I’ve included a shot of the view from his house looking over the roof of my landlord’s house. Quite a bit more expansive than my view!   🙂

View from Richard’s house at dinner tonight, looking over the roof of my landlord’s house.

Follow Reagan’s Blog for his view of his visit here!



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Triquitraque or Flamevine Finally Blooming

Finally my concrete wall made pretty! Triquitraque or Flamevine

The triquitraque or flamevine I had planted 7 months ago started out with a burst of growth and then just quit and never bloomed much. So Jean-Luc suggested I feed them since the construction site soil was not particularly rich and I thus added a fertilizer, sort of a 12-12-12 from the La Coope Farm Store. Wow! what a difference it made! They grew and got greener and are now just starting to bloom. I think there will be more, but I’m sharing what I have now and I’m pleased! It kind of makes up for the Porterweed not blooming now. Both attract hummingbirds.

From above the flamevine contrasts nicely with the blue plumbago below.
I love it when a plan comes together!   🙂
And just in time for the visit here by Reagan Frazier from Nashville.
Photographed here on his camera on my terrace overlooking Atenas.
Thanks to Reagan for snapping this photo of me at the San Jose Airport!
I promise to give a warm welcome to anyone who comes to visit. Pura Vida!

Reagan arrived yesterday afternoon and today we took it easy, walking around Atenas Central a little and eating a typical Tico lunch or “Casado.” Tomorrow we start with a Tico Breakfast with a beautiful view at Casita del Cafe and then drive to Poas Volcano and the La Paz waterfalls so he can feel like a real tourist!  🙂   Follow Reagan’s Blog for his view of the visit here!

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Palm Tanager

Palm Tanager
In my cecropia or yagrumo Tree
These first two shots were made at lunch today on my terrace while the
weaker 3rd photo made at breakfast yesterday was almost my only shot!
When you keep trying there will be a better shot eventually! Hopefully!
Palm Tanager
In my terrace cecropia or yagrumo tree.
Different shots show different aspects of a bird.
Palm Tanager Makes a Good Landing!
I love to catch a bird landing or taking off!
These are on my terrace rail at breakfast. Not best light for photo.
I make my identification with app and 2 books, my best call, not 100%!
Made the day before the top two shots. Click for larger image. 

This is in the family of the more common Blue-gray Tanager that I’ve photographed many times and the book says has a similar song. This is my first time to photograph these guys.

My Costa Rica Birds Photo Gallery   OR   All My Costa Rica Photo Galleries


Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.  ~Izaak Walton

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Friday of Healthcare Tour

Old Man Tree in Breakfast Room

A stop by CPI Spanish Immersion School in Heredia for one short lesson.

Visited the smaller public hospital in San Ramon.
Public hospitals aren’t as fancy and pretty as private,
but very clean and functional inside.

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Paul & Gloria’s view with a Poro Tree blooming. Now is time for Poro.
Lunch at home of Paul & Gloria Yeatman with guest speakers.

Visiting the San Ramon Feria or Farmers’ Market Friday afternoon.
Paul & Gloria emphasize this as a part of healthcare!

We also visited a small neighborhood clinic, farmacia, bank, community center, Red Cross which does all the emergency ambulances, a museum, and talked about insurance, the CAJA government healthcare, homecare provided by CAJA, and even a presentation by a volunteer organization encouraging us to volunteer. Whew! A full day! But very helpful. They were showing us what it is really like for medical care in a local community, in this case San Ramon. I will do a separate post on San Ramon and give my comparison to Atenas. This ended the Healthcare Tour at dinner time in San Ramon. I spent the night there and tried to post these photos but the little La Posada Hotel had very slow internet, so I saved them for today, Saturday and will purposefully do two posts. The next one with a few shots of San Ramon sans-healthcare!

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Black-cowled Oriole

Black-cowled Oriole
Inside my house on a screen
Black-cowled Oriole
Inside my house as seen from outside before I opened the screen.
He flew away, probably fearful of houses now.

During the day when at home I leave the garden door without a screen open and the sliding glass doors and screens to the terrace open, thus easy for wildlife to sometimes explore inside.  🙂

When this happens I open all the other screens and then try to open the one he is on. As is often the case, when I started sliding this one (from the outside) he flew the other way out another window and up into a tree! I leave nothing fully open at night. Had a bat once and trying to avoid that if I can. 
From Charlie! Retired in Costa Rica!

See my Costa Rica Birds Photo Gallery with 156 species I’ve photographed in Costa Rica so far! And with about 900 species of birds here, I have a ways to go!   🙂

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Layering My Private Jungle

Year-around blooming flowers for my terrace rocking chair view.
And behind my terrace planters are three layers of plants in my yard
and another in the neighbor’s. Soon we will be separated by a jungle!  🙂
One of the round pots I moved from inside because of a lack of sun there.
The other had ornamental grass which I will replace with something green.
Like my garden, the yard and terrace are always a work in progress!
And my poinsettias are still blooming to the right at terrace entrance!

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Hiding the Dog Fence

My landlords who live on the hill above me have a cute little dog that kept getting lost out in the neighborhood and was in danger of being run-over. So, fence time! And about the same time they got a second small dog to keep the first one company and maybe added motivation to stay home. Well, the dog fence was right out my kitchen window across the driveway and I was dreading it. But Jean-Luc is so thoughtful that he immediately had the gardener plant morning glory vines along the fence and now it is beautiful!

It will soon be a flowering hedge

From my kitchen window

Nice!
And by the way, Costa Rica continues to become more eco-friendly as urged in this article: 
5 Tips for Helping the Planet from Costa Rica    (Hint: They help in other countries too!)
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Changing Garden

 I did what I thought was pretty radical pruning of the overgrown giant Porter Weeds and some of the Overgrown Red Ginger. But my “TuttiFruti,” which had been my most colorful plant, was apparently dying. So the gardeners cut it to the ground which I would have had trouble doing, though we had been pruning it some. They also sprayed for a leaf-eating insect. If it does not come back healthy, we will pull it and plant something different on my border. But we will probably have nothing blooming along the border when Reagan visits in just 4 weeks. Sorry Reagan! Though plants fool you here and some grow really fast!

The colorful border (inset photo) was dying, maybe insects for which he sprayed, but it is cut to ground now,
hoping for a beautiful renewal or revival. If not, I’ll get a different border. But waiting is hard!  🙂

Even without the border and the heavy pruning, the garden looks okay.
The Red Ginger and Purple Petunias will always bloom, even when cut.
And also the Plumbago, though it blooms on new growth, so cutting it back diminishes blooms briefly.
And though not seen above, I am getting new blooms on my Heliconias as seen in below photos. 

The tall plant in the back of garden photo above is where
this large Heliconia sports 4 blooms right now!
This is the biggest of the four.
This smaller Heliconia by my kitchen window also has several blooms.
The other plants like it have red and orange blooms but are dormant now.
I cut back the two big Porterweeds the hummingbirds love, BUT
I still have one smaller plant blooming and attracting hummers!
Though the hummingbirds are mainly in the Yellow Bell Trees now.
And very few butterflies are around this time of year.
May-July was the most butterflies last year.
The TriqueTraque or Orange Trumpet Vine has not done well, but now that I started feeding it fertilizer I’m seeing it grow a little and getting a few flowers, so there is still hope that it will cover that big massive concrete wall in time! That’s my goal!




The Maraca blooms at the
base of a very tall plant.

Also once my Planta Maraca or Shampoo Ginger gets established, I expect to regularly have more blooms, which is more exotic to me than the heliconias! And every time we trim the Blumbago it shoots out new growth with lots of blooms, so everything will have its ups and downs but as I wanted, something is blooming year-aroung, all the time! And it is fun to watch it change, though I have learned (what I really already knew), that maintaining a garden this big and a yard with lots of flowers is a lot of work, even with a hired gardener a couple of times a month! And for any reader living here, my most constant and prolific bloomers have been the Red Ginger and Purple Petunias. And I still don’t have all the Spanish names for these flowers and that sometimes that changes depending on who I talk to or which website I check!  🙂

PURA VIDA!
EDITORIAL CORRECTION: Yesterdays post was of an unusual bug in my bathroom, I tried to call it a stick or matchstick insect, but Kevin & Charles both correctly noticed that it is/was a spider: 

It’s a spider – 8 legs
Insects have 6 legs                        THANKS KEVIN!

AND LATER: A note from Charles Parker with the same 8-leg, 6-leg story! Did I know that? 🙂