On today’s walk I decided that the above view of my “Country Road” from a few days ago is a much more pleasing view, and I also discovered a red Canna that captivated me . . .
Brilliant
Burgeoning
Blossom
And you may have noticed that I returned to my earlier efforts of writing Haiku Poetry – the Americanized 2-3-2 syllable version rather than the original Japanese 5-7-5 syllables for two reasons: (1) You can describe more in fewer syllables in English than Japanese and (2) It is easier for this old man! 🙂 But I do stay with the Japanese original purpose of simply describing nature, as I also try to do in my photography. It is a FUN part of my retirement and keeps my elderly brain alert! 🙂 Though it will not always be possible to also make them into alliterations as I did today! 🙂
Gravel & dirt roads with chickens, cows, and other animals – its universal in all countries and is romanticized, sung about, or just remembered from childhood maybe. But in a developing country like Costa Rica it’s very common everywhere and yesterday morning I walked again on this one that is so near, yet not a regular part of my walks yet. When you leave our paved-road gated community, most people turn left on paved Avenida 8 which takes you to Calle 3 or Calle 1 for a direct shot downtown, to supermarkets, pharmacies, the bank, etc. and it’s the way I walk most often (and share photos from) when not walking around in the housing development, and we have our own “country road here,” Calle Nueva, that I’ve shared about several times and that link is to a gallery.
So . . . if you leave our gate and turn right, the pavement ends in the equivalent of 3 blocks and becomes a gravel road (my “country road” yesterday) and it curves up and over a hill and back down to “The Radial 27,” the connector between downtown Atenas and our nearest controlled access highway, Highway 27 that runs between San Jose and the Jaco Beach & Puntarenas Port area of our Pacific Coast, and is always congested. But I digress! 🙂
Avenida 8 in front of Roca Verde development turns into a dirt and gravel road with chickens, cows, an orchard, barbed wire fences, and over the little hill it runs right into Radial 27 directly in front of the entrance to our Farmers’ Market Pavilion, serving the area with fresh produce every Friday morning. It is a nice walk to the Farmers’ Market and for me yesterday I walked on into town on the highway making a big circle for a longer day’s walk with a nice image of “country roads” on my mind, thinking I was John Denver. Just one more joy of living “Retired in Costa Rica.” CLICK an image to enlarge it:
Chicken in the Road
Farmers’ Market from the Road
Down the Hill – Yep! One lane!
Entrance to Farmers’ Market
Neighborhood Orchard
Rooster from Calle Nueva
Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong.
Maybe because of the big leaves, or their fast growth or even because they attract toucans and sloths – I’m not sure why – but I’ve always liked the Cecropia or Guarumo it is called here. And when their leaves dry up and fall off they become works of art in my opinion!
To find out, SEE my Cecropia-Guarumo GALLERY with several shots over the years from my garden and other places and I will in the future work on adding more photos for it. 🙂 Or if it is ALL TREES you like, I have also recently created a TREES GALLERY which you might like with tree shots from all of my Costa Rica travels – a lot! 🙂
Yep! That’s how many different kinds of ants we have in Costa Rica and I have no idea which species this one is, but not sure I’ve noticed him around my house before. The leaf-cutters are the most identifiable, always carrying a piece of leaf or flower, and I’ve shown them on the blog multiple times. This little guy was on the railing of my terrace two mornings ago. They are all interesting! Until they come in the house, I leave them alone and they leave me alone. 🙂
In October or November every year my Strangler Fig Tree or Ficus Tree locally looses all of its leaves in a week or two and immediately, before the last leaf falls, starts the replacement with new leaves, making beautiful picture of rebirth. The last time I blogged about it was in November 2015, called FALL? The Interesting Strangler Fig.
This year I decided to just focus on the growth of new leaves, the literal “Unfolding of Nature!” In Spanish the word for growth is crecimiento, which just sounds like what this tree is doing. 🙂
The “Big Day” of Global Bird Counting was not extremely big for me. I chose the dirt country road alongside our development thinking it would have more birds as usual than around our houses, but . . . it was a little windy from 6 to 8 this morning and one of the bicycle clubs was out whizzing down our little country road which did not encourage the presence of birds. But I’m counting 12 species and a total of 50 birds, with three species not in photos below. Here’s my list for today with non-photo’d first and others alphabetically:
Gray-headed Chachalaca (3) not photographed.
Orange-chinned parakeets (12) not photographed
Melodious Blackbird (1) not a good photo to show here
The Hibiscus can be found all over Costa Rica except maybe in the higher mountains and it comes in many colors! This collection of photos does not include all the possible colors or combinations, like the one here with red and yellow swirled together. The feature photo of bright yellow with a red star center was photographed Tuesday on my walk to town in a yard 3 or 4 blocks from my house and it is the one that sparked the idea of this post. I will be looking for more colors on future walks & trips. 🙂
I had been trying to keep readers up-to-date on the renovation of Atenas Central Park but they mostly stopped work after February when the park was closed to the public because of COVID19, which would seem to me a good time to get the renovation finished without the bother of people. But no, they stopped work or maybe ran out of money? No one seems to know. Then in June they completed this one radial sidewalk, almost.
Well, the other day there was one man working on that one section of radial sidewalk they had finished and I then discovered that he was planting flowers! Great! Maybe we will have beautiful flowers like a few of Costa Rica towns central parks have. Well . . . it was just marigolds! Made me think of that great movie The Hotel Marigold! 🙂
Anyway, remaining faithful to my duty to report on the “Progress” in the renovation of Central Park Atenas, here is the latest! Marigolds! And the mass of color IS nice! 🙂
And don’t forget that I have a gallery of the step by step progress on the park, at first it was week by week, then month by month and I hope it is not now year by year! 🙂
An afternoon visitor the other day and the third time I’ve seen him at my house in more than 5 years so not a regular here. I’ve also seen him in I think 3 different lodges, so seemingly all over Costa Rica. And a neighbor saw a Gartered Trogon the other day which I’ve seen here at my house only once, though they are normal for the Central Valley.
It was nice to see something other than my three regulars, the wren, thrush and dove. I do have a Black-cowled OrioleGallery if interested as a part of my bigger Costa Rica BirdsGallery. And if you would like more info, here’s a link the the eBird Black-cowled Oriole.
