Category: Atenas

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Nature as Art – Up Close

Today I spent some time in the garden trying to be Georgia O’Keeffe with her oversize flowers, curves and colorful shapes in leaves, mountains or whatever she painted. I love her work! Here’s 10 of about 100 photos I made today in the garden.

It was also a “practice” for next week when I will be at Maquenque Lodge, not only photographing lots of birds, but hopefully some “Nature as Art” photos of many other natural creations in that beautiful wilderness setting, partly from my tree-house room!  🙂   Click an image to enlarge it or start manual slideshow.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero
See my Flora & Forest Costa Rica gallery for more of this type of “art.”
Or for some of my old Tennessee “Nature a Art” Photos, another gallery with images sized as I sold them in arts & crafts fairs in the 2010’s.
¡Pura Vida!
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Breakfast Visitors

My favorite time in my house is during breakfast on my terrace when I usually have many visitors and sometimes try to photograph them, whether bird, butterfly or other creature. This morning I managed to grab shots of 4 after trying and failing to get shots of two tiny orange & black butterflies that flew as a pair and never lighted on a flower for me. Shooting them in flight is very difficult and I failed. Both these butterflies and birds are regular repeats for me, but each one is a unique individual!   🙂

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Blue-gray Tanager
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Rufous-naped Wren
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Dione Juno
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Polydamas Swallowtail

 

See my Costa Rica Butterfly Gallery  and  Bird Gallery  for more images.

 

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”   ~Rachel Carson

 

¡Pura Vida!

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Car in Ditch

My rent house is on the side of a hill above a residential street inside the Roca Verde development. I can look down through the trees and other plants to the street if I wish – not my favorite view!   🙂

A week or so ago I heard a crash below me and a car driven by one of my Tico neighbors had gone into the concrete ditch made for rainwater going down the hill. No curb or barrier or guardrail along the rainwater ditch. Here’s 3 shots on my cellphone of the guy in the ditch, the flatbed truck preparing to pull him out and the guys helping the truck by pushing on the car (which they always do here!). The car was all scratched up and probably had some wheel, axle or alignment problems, but he drove away it away without needing the big truck to take him into a shop. Pura vida!   🙂

Daily I thank God for not owning a car!   🙂

 

“Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect – like a man – on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.”
― Edward Abbey

¡Pura Vida!

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Yellows & Whites + Grasshopper

Today a cloud of mostly Yellows was in my garden plus one brown Skipper I didn’t try to photograph. They don’t stay still, thus very difficult to photograph and with the book full of Yellows & Whites the identification is not always exacting, but my best effort with a few “either/or” IDs!   🙂

And the grasshopper only eats the leaves, while the butterflies go for the flower nectar, so no competition! They share a flower!   🙂

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My Costa Rica Butterflies Gallery

¡Pura Vida!

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Morning Walk in Nature

Walking around my little house is one morning joy I can have any day! As good as up the hill or in a faraway place.

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There I feel that nothing can befall me.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

My Flora & Forest Gallery

¡Pura Vida!

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Design by Nature

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

~Rabindranath Tagore

 

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Guarumo or Cecropia Tree from my terrace – always facing heaven.

 

You have glimpsed the divine.”
~Vera Nazarian

 

See my Flora & Forest Gallery.

¡Pura Vida!

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Color Walk

On the same walk to town with yesterday’s beetle I snapped these 3 flowers that caught my attention. The red & yellow hibiscus is rare or at least for my eyes!   🙂   One of the red flowers (feature photo) appears to be in the poinsettia family but not the traditional one while the other red flower is more common here, but eye-catching none-the-less!

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“Life is like a box of crayons.”

~John Mayer

My Flora & Forest GALLERY

¡Pura Vida!

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Unidentified BEETLE

I spent nearly an hour searching my books and all over the internet for an ID on this interesting fellow I saw while walking to town the other day. He is possibly in the large Scarab Beetle family or Stag Beetle family or seems related to our Rhinoceros Beetle and Hercules Beetle, but even with those I can’t find photos of one with these large, wide “horns” or divided head. New surprises every day!   🙂

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Unidentified Beetle, 2 to 3 inches long

“Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

See my “Other Insects of Costa Rica” photo gallery for more insect oddities.

¡Pura Vida!

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Giant Swallowtail

A different butterfly in my garden today along with repeats of most seen yesterday.  🙂

The “Giant” Swallowtail is not really bigger than most other Swallowtails but identified by his patterns. See more in my Giant Swallowtail Gallery or go for all in the big Butterfly Gallery.

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Giant Swallowtail
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Giant Swallowtail

 

¡Pura Vida!

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Flowers = Butterflies

And 4 species today!   🙂   I went out and photographed the above flowers for a one-shot post when I realized there was a dozen or so butterflies beyond them on my Porterweed flowers of these 4 species (one I incorrectly named the other day}:

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Cloudless Sulphur
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Statira Sulphur
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Polydamas Swallowtail, I mistakenly called a Red-sided Swallowtail recently. Sorry!

 

Cloudywing Butterfly (not sure which one of several Cloudywings)

 

See more of these 4 and 100 others in my Costa Rica Butterflies Gallery.

¡Pura Vida!