Category: Charlie Doggett

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Buy Photos & Help Plant Trees

I recently discovered Community Carbon Trees Costa Rica which employs rural poor people to plant trees on non-productive farm land where there used to be a forest and many such barren spots are coming back as forest. Check out the above website available in both English and Español to see the great work they are doing and how you can both come here and volunteer or donate money to plant and maintain trees for renewed forests!

Trees reaching for the sun in Costa Rica!

My Photo Profits Now All Go to Plant Trees

You may not be aware that all the photos in my gallery (on SmugMug) are available for purchase as prints, wall art, and on other objects through SmugMug services (they do a great job!) PLUS my Bookstore on Blurb has my photo books available for sale. Because both sites use sub-contractors to print, they may seem a little pricy and thus I have kept my “profit” or “mark-up” down to just $1 on each item. Now I’ve decided to donate 100% of that to Community Carbon Trees (see link above) to plant trees on bare land that used to be forest. So now you know that if you buy a photo or photo book you are helping to plant trees and save our planet! Thank you! And if you don’t need a photo, why not go to their website and donate something to help plant trees? 🙂

Forest in San Gerardo de Dota

“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

― Nelson Henderson

¡Pura Vida!

And of course I have a CR Trees Gallery! 🙂

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Dazzling Tropical Colors

You may get tired of me talking about my garden and continuing to photograph the flowers, but each experience with them is new and different and I am somehow compelled to share! As one of my favorite writers, Edna St. Vincent Millay, says . . .

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”

~Edna St. Vincent Millay
Torch Ginger or El bastón de emperador

Continue reading for a slide show of flowers I photographed yesterday afternoon on a walk through my little flower gardens – enjoy! 🙂

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Contrasting Hans Christian Anderson with Preston & Childs

Now that I finished all of the Agatha Christie books, I try different kinds of books from non-fiction to mysteries to classics and have frequently followed the advice of my younger brother, Jerry, who told me once that if you don’t enjoy a book or get something from it, why continue reading it? Even a classic!

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A Really Big Tree!

Though not included on the web page of Monumental Trees of Costa Rica, it is a very wide tree that Walter knew about and we stopped for it along Highway 1 near San Ramon Canton. You can best understand how wide it is in the photo of me standing by it. It is obviously not anywhere close to the tallest with what appears to have been it’s crown broken off, maybe in a storm. But it’s still a nice big Ceiba Tree to stop for! And too wide to put your arms around! 🙂

A very wide Ceiba Tree – see comparison to a person in 3rd photo.

It was probably very tall before the crown broke off, maybe in a storm?
All Ceiba Trees are wide, but you can tell that this one is really wide!

“If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.”

― Hal Borland

¡Pura Vida!

And of course I have a Trees Gallery! 🙂

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Goose Egg Falls

Hmmm! What is this? Well, you see, my trip planner, Walter, works very hard to please his customers with little “extras” and knew about an unnamed waterfall along our return highway near San Ramon or in that Canton (county), just 20 meters off the highway! So we stopped and parked in the edge of the mud by the highway and walked through the mud down a rocky little decline (that I almost fell on) to a stream to be where we could see this waterfall with minimal water right now in dry season. Well, it was rocky as you can see in one photo and the bottom of my shoes were muddy. I put my weight down on one, possibly wet, rock and slipped falling backwards on the rocks, banging my head on one of those big round ones. It hurt bad for about a minute or 2 only. Then I felt a growing bump on my head.

I thought I was dead or seriously injured and so did Walter who was concerned about me for days. But I’m fine now, just immediately after the fall I had a big “Goose Egg” which is what we called a “bump on the head” as a child in South Arkansas! 🙂 The goose egg on my head lasted until the next morning and was gone. no more pain after the fall and I was already crazy, so you can’t tell if it affected me that way! 🙂 And I got to add one more waterfall to my collection from this one day trip. (45 sounds better than 44 in my gallery) 🙂 And I will try to work it into the photo book if I can.

When we drove over the bridge over that stream a sign said: “Rio Catarata” which in English would be simply “Waterfall River.” Thus my own name for the falls works for me! 🙂 Pura vida from Goose Egg Falls!

Unnamed Waterfall in San Ramon Canton, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
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Last Shot from the Pacific

Of course there’s more photos and even more wildlife I haven’t shown like the White-nosed Coati and more butterflies, but I have them in the Christmas Trip 2021 Gallery, so check it out if you want more! 🙂

This was another favorite rainforest shot from Cristal Ballena that also includes the sea, so I just had to add it as my last post on that trip. As you can see, the rainforest not only surrounds the hotel, but flows all the way down to the ocean and the national park beach. It’s a beautiful place that I enjoy visiting and will probably go again someday. Now back to shots from my garden, the neighborhood and the little coffee farmers’ town of Atenas. For awhile anyway! 🙂 I’m trying to schedule a one-day waterfall trip and then in February I’m back to a tree house at Maquenque Lodge, Boca Tapada. 🙂

Rainforest & ocean view, Cristal Ballena Hotel, Uvita, Costa Rica.

“If man doesn’t learn to treat the oceans and the rainforest with respect, man will become extinct.”

~Peter Benchley

Tico Times article: Costa Rica Tourism in 2022: Demand is back

Most Read Blog Posts 2021 is Humbling

I finally figured out how to get to historical statistics on my WordPress Blog/Website, wanting to see what kind of nature photos more people are interested in. Well, it was not my nature shots in 2021 but the posts labeled “Cancer Update” that all had over 200 readers or “hits” with none of my nature posts over 200 except the weird exception of an old one on a Truck Centipede. So THANK YOU for being interested in my health! It has been a long slow recovery still in process but I am so much closer to “normal” now and I was quite active on the last trip. I see my oncologist tomorrow and hopefully not many more times needed after that. 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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2021 in Photos

This year was unlike any other in my life, not only because of the Covid 19 Virus Pandemic, vaccines, mask-wearing, hand-washing, and social distancing everywhere, but even more so as my year of major cancer surgery and radiation treatments. Yet through it all I managed to keep nature central to my life most of the time and even make a few photo trips.

I will not try to do a photo-a-month but rather 12 favorite photos depicting major life events, trips, and different types of nature starting with the 2 wonderful trips before the cancer surgery in March. The links in the photo captions are to my photo trip galleries for those events. I even have a gallery for radiation therapy (not one for surgery) and include surgery in my cancer journal and the combined photo book on my cancer adventure. 🙂 And the featured image at top is a Tiger Heliconian Butterfly on a “Hot Lips” Flower on my just completed Christmas trip to Uvita. 🙂

Resplendent Quetzal from January trip to San Gerardo de Dota & Hotel Savegre (gallery link).
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