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Yes! I even love this tree in my supermarket parking lot which adds beauty and oxygen to my simple life here in Atenas! 🙂
“Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish.”
― Munia Khan
¡Pura Vida!
Yeah! I know, it seems that I like every tree! And maybe I do, but this one by the cow pasture in front of my house is special I think because of its shape. Though that one little tree to its left sort of takes away from the shape 🙂 it’s still a neat tree!
The Featured Photo above is the broad look from the cow pasture with that tiny sliver of roof on the far left edge of photo being my house on the hill. The tree is the one in center of above photo to the left of the 3 big houses. And below is a closer view.
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
― Kahlil Gebran
¡Pura Vida!
My TREES GALLERY has all kinds! 🙂
Described in the Live in Costa Rica Blog or here’s my quick summary:
FOR ME? It is the Best Place to Experience NATURE!
🙂
¡Pura Vida!
On my round of errands this morning, one stop was at the public clinic to sign up for my Coronavirus Vaccine as one of an expected. 3.7 million to be vaccinated in Costa Rica this year, basically the whole population. It has begun all over the country as a free vaccination provided by the government with millions of doses already in country. As an older adult I should be called in before younger people and within the month the technician told me. I just wait for the phone call, in Spanish, and hope they speak slow enough for me to understand! 🙂
Though millions of doses are already here, more have been ordered says this Tico Times article: Costa Rica to purchase coronavirus vaccines for 648,000 more people
I also saw my female private practice GP doctor this week and already my hurting knee is much better and less swollen. Medical services here are really good! Both public and private and cheap or free!
¡Pura Vida!
On one of my walks on the nearby “Country Lane,” I found this simple little tree covered in yellow blooms, like many Costa Rica trees now, and liked it!
The Feature Photo is the broad view of the landscape with the little solo tree, while below I include a closer view from another angle, all from behind a fence, and I never cross fences! 🙂
“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.”
~Isaac Newton
¡Pura Vida!
Tonight or tomorrow I will begin reporting on the Cloud Forests of San Gerardo de Dota in Savegre Hotel. It is a lot different from my Central Valley coffee farming town of Atenas! 🙂
Expats living in Atenas, Costa Rica (mostly retirees) have a Facebook Group Page where expats ask one another “how to” or “where to” kinds of questions and share important information. Each year the group has a photo contest for what will be the group’s page header that year. My shot or our town from a hill in Roca Verde one foggy morning is the winner this year! 🙂
I almost used this photo for my digital Christmas Card this year. Glad I didn’t so it will now be solely the identity of the group.
And my prize? Something yummy from Pat’s kitchen! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
The full photo below lends itself well to the narrow crop for a page header:
Sorry that you got a false email notice of this post two days ago! In short, this old man is sometimes technologically challenged! 🙂 I often schedule posts a day or so ahead and when the scheduling calendar popped up I clicked the 4th and entered. Whoops! I had just clicked the 4th of December! 🙂 I quickly changed it to the 4th of January, but alas, the auto email had already been sent out. 🙂
Since March and the first arrival of COVID19 in Costa Rica, the government Health Ministry prohibits buffet service in restaurants. But I guess that does not include ants eating a spec of food together on my terrace! 🙂
These tiny black ants are eating a tiny spec of something: food, fruit, flower, other insect or I’m not sure what on my terrace, right in front of my rocking chair. I just had to photograph them! 🙂
If all humans disappeared today ,the earth would start improving tomorrow. If all the ants disappeared today ,the earth would start dying tomorrow.
~David Suzuki
🙂
See also my MORE INSECTS CR GALLERY.
And more photos from Arenal & Caño Negro are coming! I’m still organizing photos! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Around the first of January every year in Costa Rica the skylines, forest tops and trees in every direction seem to be ablaze in yellow. In my yard it is what we call “Yellow Bells” in English, while many others here and throughout the country are the Yellow Cortez Tree and in other places the Brazilian Fire Tree. These shots are from recent short morning walks through my neighborhood. CLICK image to see larger . . .
“How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.”
– Vincent Van Gogh
¡Pura Vida!
My related Photo Galleries: Flora & Forest
And more photos from Arenal & Caño Negro are coming! I’m still organizing photos! 🙂
I arrived at Arenal Observatory Lodge in time for lunch with my driver and my first afternoon of looking for birds with 11 species photographed including the above Emerald Tanager (link to eBird description) which is a “Lifer” or first-time-seen bird for me! And a colorful one found only in Central America plus Columbia & Ecuador.
I did lots of walking including to the top of the 28 meters or 92 ft. tall observation tower with 146 steps on stairs. I’ve gotten lots of birds and monkeys from this tower in the past, but not today with it being overcast and very windy when I went up today, but I got several landscape shots including this one I call “A Sea of Treetops.”
“For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
¡Pura Vida!
I just found this feature image from the May 9 “Big Day” of bird counting for eBird when I walked, counted and photographed birds in Roca Verde and adjacent Calle Nueva. The only non-bird photo was this above of a “House in the Forest” which I think I shot because it was so appealing to me, beckoning me into the forest.
Then just as I started to use it in this post as a wishful place, PRESTO! I realized that I already have it! It is the same kind of thing I have created with my little rental house, planting trees and flowers all around it where there were none already until I now have a slightly more modern version of the above house in the woods. Mine is seen below:
I love my “house in the forest” and the “jungle” I’ve created around it. This was “wide open” or mostly barren when I came 5.5 years ago, so I’m proud of my “reforestation!” 🙂 Plant a tree! It will make you happy!
A few weeks ago I spoke to this “living in a forest” with my blog post Forest Window and back in January I did a post titled My Windows – My World where I actually showed you the view I have from every room in my house! 🙂 You see, I love forests and living in them! 🙂
But I also live periodically all over Costa Rica now and those many forests can be seen through my eyes in a Flora & Forest Gallery and of course other galleries with the birds & other animals in these forests! And oh yes, today is the day I leave for one of my favorite forests in Costa Rica, Arenal Volcano National Park and the wonderful in-park wilderness lodge Arenal Observatory Lodge (link to lodge website). So maybe an arrival-day blog post report tonight! 🙂 Enjoy your own trees and plant some more! 🙂
“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
– John Muir
¡Pura Vida!
Costa Rica is technically in the northern hemisphere, though only about 13° above the equator, so I guess we could call it “Winter Solstice” like the rest of the northern hemisphere. But it actually ends what Costa Rica calls “Winter” or our “Rainy Season” (May-Nov) with already 2 or 3 weeks of no rain in Atenas now. So our “Summer” has begun which means no more rain until next May, with a few rare exceptions. And until March the wind blows more. (More on the wind in another post later.)
Since most northerners don’t like rain on their vacations, it also begins the high tourist season (in normal years) 🙂 with no rain and slightly warmer weather Dec-April (but only by a couple of degrees). For example, in Atenas the average temperature in Fahrenheit is the mid-70’s year-around (winter & summer). No one here has or needs heaters or air-conditioners except some coastal or beach houses/hotels that have air-conditioning because it is hotter and more humid along both coasts. One of several reasons I don’t live on the beach.
Now . . . Will tomorrow really be our shortest day and longest night? like Canada & the U.S.? Technically yes, but because or our proximity to the equator, our total daylight variance over a whole year (December to June solstices) is only 30 minutes difference, meaning that in most places all over Costa Rica it gets dark sometime between 5 & 6 PM every evening and the sun rises between 5 & 6 every morning, year-around. 🙂 Thus we hardly notice winter solstice here. Pura vida! 🙂 And oh yes, the featured photo is one of my sunrise photos from the Caribbean or Atlantic Coast at Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo.
“There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”
~John Ruskin
¡Pura vida!
