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| He flew into the house last night. Not in either of my books. |
My Spanish Blog tells about Getting Spanish Conversation Practice for the Cost of a Pizza.
And for more moth & butterfly photos, see my Costa Rica Butterflies PHOTO GALLERY
Preparing for 15 September
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| Escuela Central older students prepare for Independence Day Parade |
This is the primary school and these were learning to march with flag poles (sans flags) which will be part of how their school participates in the 15 September Independence Day Parade. This morning at the same school the band was practice marching in this same place but I couldn’t stop, running late for my class. All the high school bands are preparing too as I can hear their drummers and we have a community band that will also participate in the parade next Tuesday morning.
On the night before there will be a lights parade with prizes given for the best decorated lanterns.
Hoy aprendo verbos saber y conocer en Aprendo Español en Atenas.
Tour de Atenas? And Bingo!
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| Some of the hundreds of bikes going by my house for more than an hour today. |
I’m not sure what it is, but they don’t act like they are racing but rather completing a tour. For 30 minutes it was almost bumper to bumper bikes then the stragglers continued for an hour or two more. Participants are mostly Tico or local people with a few expats included. You see these large groups of spandex-clad bikers occasionally around here, usually on weekends and even out on the highways and rural roads. While during the week bikers are working people with baskets making deliveries or just getting to work, etc. Neither the town’s narrow streets or the narrow highways are safe for casual or transportation lone bikers, plus we are all hills which makes it difficult as well as dangerous. It is rare to see children biking the streets and neither kids nor teens bike to school. They all walk to school! Like me! 🙂 As much as I like biking, I think I will still to walking and maybe live longer.
After church online in Nashville I went to the Catholic church for another Bingo experience with other Su Espacio Spanish students. This time more students came, two tables full! A lot of fun. I report with photos in my new Español blog Aprendo Español en Atenas, titled Bingo a los números de práctica and I’m getting better with my numbers in spanish!
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| My table of 7 was one of two tables of students from Su Espacio this time. Me and David are missing from the photo of this table. |
Tico food and drinks are available for sale and this time I ate a big piece of pineapple cornbread with a Pepsi. Nope, I’m not doing without my sugar fixes here! Dulce is the name for sweets here. 🙂
They just call the numbers (No B-16, N-23 like in states) and we have a bowl of corn kernals on the table to mark our numbers. Susan was the only one of our group (1st on left above) who had a winning card but there were two winners and one prize. There was a drawing and she lost the draw. But the prizes are nothing to write home about!
RAIN in the Garden!
Has the “Rainy Season” really started now? Afternoon rain for 2 days in a row! 🙂
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| Rain dripping off a Guarumo leaf. |
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| Wet Palmetto leaf in my garden. |
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| Wet Heliconia leaves in my garden. Camera doesn’t show rain, just wet! |
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| My miniature rainforest in the rain; habitat of birds, butterflies, frogs, & lizards. But you can’t see the rain in the photo. 🙂 Believe me. It is raining! |
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| Babies! My pride and joy, rare Maraca Plant (Shampoo Ginger), has 4 new sprouts! Snapped this as rain stopped and I finished post. See ground cover filling in? My garden is one of the best things about this house and done from scratch! With a rare plant to boot! It came from being nice to the gardeners. 🙂 |
“Open up, heavens, and rain.
Clouds, pour out buckets of my goodness!
Loosen up, earth, and bloom salvation;
sprout right living.
I, God, generate all this.”
Isaiah 45:8
The Message
Fork-tailed Emerald Hummingbird
Back to my garden . . .
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| Fork-tailed Emerald Hummingbird In my garden, Roca Verde house, Atenas, Costa Rica |
This is my second time to photograph this species in my garden. Both times the light is not good for a clear and colorful photo. He/she is an iridescent green all over except for the dark, forked tail. The first time was no better. What I need is sunlight shining directly on the bird! 🙂
SPANISH LANGUAGE UPDATE
My progress has been so very slow. ¡Aprendo poco a poco español! (I learn Spanish little by little.) Is what I say to some people. So I have joined a second class that meets only once a week at the little evangelical church I have attended some, Iglesia Biblical. It provides a text book and workbook for homework and it is too early to see if it will help me learn faster, though every effort is of some value! What I need most is to just talk more in Spanish, ignoring the embarrassment of doing it wrong. That is what David Castillo at Su Espacio is trying to get me to do. We are down to just two in his class right now, so it is almost like tutoring. I also try to do one little activity each day on duolingo.com which is a great free language learning site! And I just ordered another CD-based course. So I’m trying! ¡Pero es difícil! (But it is difficult!) Or slow! David suggested I do this blog in Spanish, but that would leave too many of you out, so I won’t. Maybe a separate blog in Spanish?
DROUGHT
This has been one of the driest “Rainy Seasons” on record for the Central Valley and I have to water my garden and new trees every other day. Everyone says the rain should really come in September and October. We’ll see! It is cloudy and thundering right now, but that often means little or nothing!
This has been one of the driest “Rainy Seasons” on record for the Central Valley and I have to water my garden and new trees every other day. Everyone says the rain should really come in September and October. We’ll see! It is cloudy and thundering right now, but that often means little or nothing!
The only exception to the drought has been the Caribbean side of the country and a few places in the north. It rained every day we were at Yorkin. The northwest or Guanacaste area is always the driest part of the country and it is even drier this year. It is really hard on farmers!
Time flies, but not backwards, like a hummingbird can.
(-:
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| Good night from Atenas, Costa Rica! The little bit of rain passed fast and gave us fog. Pura Vida! View from my balcony of course! |
Church Bingo, Stuffed Grapefruit, and Indian Village!
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| David invited estudiantes del español to the church bingo Sunday afternoon. Not many of us showed up to practice our números in a fun way. Our table. We were given corn kernels with our cards to lay on the numbers. A card cost 1 mil colones ($2) as fundraiser for the church. None on our table won a prize, though Corinna had a winning card. Plus food was for sale! We shared tortillas with cream cheese. Ticos use cream cheese instead of butter for lots of things. |
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| Bingo & Lunch for sale was right after 11 AM Mass. That is not when this older photo was made. That Mass is a packed house! |
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Stuffed Grapefruit!
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| copied from web |
I forgot to report the other day my experience eating a stuffed grapefruit, a Costa Rican specialty! The whole grapefruit is cooked and somehow candied and mine was stuffed with cream cheese, a dearly beloved by-product of milk or the cream here, which is why it is hard to find local butter. They use most of the cream for cream cheese! I told you that Ticos have more of a sweet tooth than me! 🙂
Here is one online recipe that doesn’t use cream cheese but a condensed milk and sugar filling. That is all I could find online. I guess it is just too local!”The place where I bought it used the name “Ronja Rellenos” for them, which I can’t find on the web. Another new experience!
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| copied from Google images |
SERENDIPITY TRIP TOMORROW! Caribbean Coast and 3 nights in BriBri Indian Village.
The birding club had this trip planned for awhile with limited space in the humble lodging. I was on the waiting list. Well, last night there was a last minute cancellation and I decided to take it without any of my usual long range planning! Am I getting impulsive?
I have a 4W Drive vehicle reserved for in the morning. I’ll drive to the coast and to a hotel in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca called Cariblue, very nice and on the beach! Meeting some club members for dinner there.
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| copied from Casa de Las Mujeres site |
Then friday morning we caravan drive through the jungle through Bribri to Bambu on dirt and gravel roads, fording streams. At Bambu we pay someone to watch our cars and we take our “pack light” bags on a small boat for an hour floating trip to the village on Yorkin River in the Bribri Yorkin Reservation where we will stay 3 nights with no electricity at night (limited in day).
The Bribri are our hosts and will serve all meals, take us birding in the mornings and evenings with free time in the village and surrounding area with a waterfall and a hot springs. It will of course be a cultural experience with some of the few indigenous peoples left in Costa Rica. It is intentionally not promoted as a tourist destination. There’s only a half page in the Lonely Planet Costa Rica travel guide book about Yorkin. It is where people live and work and not equipped to handle tourists. Birders are different of course! 🙂
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| copied from Google images |
The only websites on the village are by the various tour companies who take small groups there. I’m linking to Casa de Las Mujeres Yorkin because they have this good map. We are not using any tour company. Our birding guide has worked directly with the village elders and they are providing our boat transportation, meals, housing and guides into the forest in search of birds. So we are totally supporting the indigenous community.
A dream trip for me! How often do you have indigenous people taking you into an ancient forest looking for birds?
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| copied from Google images |
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― Augustine of Hippo
I Love My Trees!
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| Strangler Fig Tree by the road in front yard. |
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| Palm Tree behind my Guarumo Tree in side yard which is my front yard, balcony |
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| Guarumo Tree leaf, up close. This is a type of cecropia tree. Leaves are the favorite food of sloths, and the seeds of Keel-billed Toucans! Mine has to get a lot larger for animals though! |
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| Yellow Bell Tree is the name I choose from many it is called. My front yard will be beautiful with 4 of them come February-March! |
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| Ylang-Ylang Tree, is known for its wonderful smell or aroma! Mine is new, but hope for the aroma before a year is up! A source of perfumes! |
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| Unknown Tree (for now) I see out my kitchen window. |
Want to improve your health? Go Live Near Trees says an article in The Washington Post.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
~Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte
More Garden Additions
Yesterday (Saturday) I took a taxi to La Garita to visit Vivero Central, my favorite plant nursery (largest in the country). Just walking through the place motivates you to work on your garden!
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| Kevin Hunter at Vivero Central in March, making a photo of course! |
My new garden art is on a tree stump with a hole in a root near bottom that just needed a plant
coming out of it! Pequeño (small) of course! This is what I came up with:
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| Garrobo en español, like a small stateside philodendron or caladium. Kind of snuggled into a crack of the tree base, like it would in the jungle! I was afraid a vine might get out of control or take over the garden. |
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| You just barely notice it at base of tree stump, but I like the use of that hole for a plant and think it makes the garden more interesting. Its an ongoing, creative process that is fun! And notice how my ground-cover has spread! It is pilea depressa or helxine soleirolii – wonderful! Next photo is up close of it: |
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| pilea depressa or helxine soleirolii ground-cover in my main garden |
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| I also got this small planter for my patio/balcony with a red flower that blooms year-around! Plus it attracts colibri (hummingbirds)! Didn’t get the name of it. You also see the crotons around one of my front yard palms and barely the ground cover I added there. Next photo of it: |
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| I haven’t even tried to get the name of this flowering ground-cover – love it! Got a few cuttings from the apartment manager and it now covers the ground around three different trees in my front yard. The crotons were already there. |
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| The aloe vera was getting too big for the narrow bed it was in, so it got a new home of its own in this pot at the end of walk by palma roja (red palm) and you can see I added some free coleus around the palm. Not sure that’s a good match, we’ll see. May move it. Had to plant it somewhere. This pot might later go on the balcony/patio, my medicine cabinet for burns! 🙂 And it had two babies, so I have plenty of aloe around. |
I also added two ferns in two bare spots which is another texture this tropical garden needed. And I got a new ceramic pot for my dining room plant which was in a plastic pot. Accomplished at lot!
And if you have wondered about the concrete wall behind my new garden, well, my house is built into the side of a hill. It is a retainer wall above which is the landlord’s driveway on one side (below photo) and a neighbor on the other side (above photo). I have planted Triquetraque or Mexican Flame Vine at top of the wall which will soon cascade down with beautiful orange flowers and cover the ugly concrete. I’m trying to be patient while it grows! 🙂 Photo below (22-July-2015 growth):
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| Triquitraque or Mexican Flame Vine will someday cover my back wall. The advantage of being the first one in a new house is I get to help design it! |
One of my “regular” taxistas (taxi drivers) is Nelson. He is learning English and helps me with my Spanish and I help him with his English. This is his second time to take me to La Garita and he is patient waiting on me shopping. In fact he walks around with me and seems to enjoy it. I pay him above the going rate for this trip to make it fair for an hour and half+ of his time. And I now have a favorite helper at Vivero Central named Francisco (who gave me the coleus). He is so good at helping me and does pretty fair English and puts up with my Spanish, so more good local friends/helpers. And a tip will assure good service next time. Its my second time with Francisco and he has already remembered me! La Garita is halfway between Atenas and Alajuela and is the plant nursery “capital” of Costa Rica, 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) east of Atenas through the mountains and over the Rio Grande.
It is always exciting to open the door and go out
into the garden for the first time on any day.
– Marion Cran
Newly Hatched Banded Peacock Butterfly
Earlier I featured a mature Banded Peacock with most shots of top of wings. This is a younger, maybe newly hatched, with more yellowish wing bands and more brown background color than the more mature one. In my garden of course! 🙂
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| Immature Banded Peacock butterfly In my Roca Verde Garden, Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Immature Banded Peacock butterfly In my Roca Verde Garden, Atenas, Costa Rica |
“Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly, “one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.” ~Hans Christian Andersen
And don’t forget that I have a Costa Rica Butterflies PHOTO GALLERY.
Festival de Artes, Escuela Los Angeles de Atenas
I’ve gone from visiting two high schools to a primary school today. I’m helping them with promotion of their garage sale in October, raising money for a playground.
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| A younger class represents favorite storybook characters in a skit. Some creative Mom’s with these costumes! |
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| This was the first program in their new outdoor auditorium/theater with covered stage here and covered bleachers. It did rain for part of the program and they invited me to sit in the VIP tent. 🙂 |
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| Nicole, son of David & Corinna at Su Espacio. He’s front & center in red as they sing a song. |
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| Snow White tells her own story complete with magic mirror behind her and basket of poison apples in hand. |
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| Another class has skit on recycling and sorry my photo does not include the girl in a really cute dress made out of newspapers. |
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| A guest band from a school in Alajuela marched in, played concert, and then here they marched out of the outdoor arena (after the rain). They were very good and kind of like a New Orleans Dixieland Band. A common style band in Costa Rica seen at most fiestas & with dancing. That is Nicole and his mother Corinna on far right clapping. And the girl snare drummer was a fave along with a girl sax player! |
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| Disney is dearly loved here! This mural is in the entry hall of the school. |
A child’s smile is like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.
~ Author Unknown
~ Author Unknown
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| And after all that, plus hiring a maid who starts next Tuesday, I get a dinner sunset like this! PURA VIDA! |