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Musical Chairs at Post Office Now!

A miniature version of the 30-chair line at Banco Nacional.
It has been a line of standing which is hard for some old people, I guess!
For every transaction the clerk goes back to his/her desk to enter it into
a computer, even the purchase of postage for a letter. Can’t get stamps here,
they print a postage strip and stick it on each letter. Sloooow!
Like the bank, when next person is served, you all move up one chair.

I would rather show you the “musical chairs” line at the bank but the high security with armed guards there doesn’t allow me to make a photo or wear my cap or my sunglasses and I must have my real passport and not a copy like other places will use. They keep our money good and safe!  🙂
The above post office (Correos) gives very good and friendly service, just very slow. But I mailed a large box to my sister in Missouri and it got there in less than two weeks! And I get mail in a reasonable time usually. My Apdo. 441 is one of those gray boxes on the left of the above photo. 
Charlie Doggett
Apdo. 441-4013
Alajuela, Atenas, Atenas
20501 Costa Rica
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Hiding the Dog Fence

My landlords who live on the hill above me have a cute little dog that kept getting lost out in the neighborhood and was in danger of being run-over. So, fence time! And about the same time they got a second small dog to keep the first one company and maybe added motivation to stay home. Well, the dog fence was right out my kitchen window across the driveway and I was dreading it. But Jean-Luc is so thoughtful that he immediately had the gardener plant morning glory vines along the fence and now it is beautiful!

It will soon be a flowering hedge

From my kitchen window

Nice!
And by the way, Costa Rica continues to become more eco-friendly as urged in this article: 
5 Tips for Helping the Planet from Costa Rica    (Hint: They help in other countries too!)
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Cool Unknown Insect (NOT a spider!)

Reminds me of a very large tick, but I don’t think so. 6 legs = insect!
Please Comment if you know its name.

A different view, both shots on my terrace table.

I love insects. They are amazing.~Andrea Arnold
And that is a good thing if you live in Costa Rica!
There are more than 300,000 species of insects here!  ~Wikipedia


See also my Costa Rica Insects photo gallery  and  my Costa Rica Butterflies photo gallery
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Changing Garden

 I did what I thought was pretty radical pruning of the overgrown giant Porter Weeds and some of the Overgrown Red Ginger. But my “TuttiFruti,” which had been my most colorful plant, was apparently dying. So the gardeners cut it to the ground which I would have had trouble doing, though we had been pruning it some. They also sprayed for a leaf-eating insect. If it does not come back healthy, we will pull it and plant something different on my border. But we will probably have nothing blooming along the border when Reagan visits in just 4 weeks. Sorry Reagan! Though plants fool you here and some grow really fast!

The colorful border (inset photo) was dying, maybe insects for which he sprayed, but it is cut to ground now,
hoping for a beautiful renewal or revival. If not, I’ll get a different border. But waiting is hard!  🙂

Even without the border and the heavy pruning, the garden looks okay.
The Red Ginger and Purple Petunias will always bloom, even when cut.
And also the Plumbago, though it blooms on new growth, so cutting it back diminishes blooms briefly.
And though not seen above, I am getting new blooms on my Heliconias as seen in below photos. 

The tall plant in the back of garden photo above is where
this large Heliconia sports 4 blooms right now!
This is the biggest of the four.
This smaller Heliconia by my kitchen window also has several blooms.
The other plants like it have red and orange blooms but are dormant now.
I cut back the two big Porterweeds the hummingbirds love, BUT
I still have one smaller plant blooming and attracting hummers!
Though the hummingbirds are mainly in the Yellow Bell Trees now.
And very few butterflies are around this time of year.
May-July was the most butterflies last year.
The TriqueTraque or Orange Trumpet Vine has not done well, but now that I started feeding it fertilizer I’m seeing it grow a little and getting a few flowers, so there is still hope that it will cover that big massive concrete wall in time! That’s my goal!




The Maraca blooms at the
base of a very tall plant.

Also once my Planta Maraca or Shampoo Ginger gets established, I expect to regularly have more blooms, which is more exotic to me than the heliconias! And every time we trim the Blumbago it shoots out new growth with lots of blooms, so everything will have its ups and downs but as I wanted, something is blooming year-aroung, all the time! And it is fun to watch it change, though I have learned (what I really already knew), that maintaining a garden this big and a yard with lots of flowers is a lot of work, even with a hired gardener a couple of times a month! And for any reader living here, my most constant and prolific bloomers have been the Red Ginger and Purple Petunias. And I still don’t have all the Spanish names for these flowers and that sometimes that changes depending on who I talk to or which website I check!  🙂

PURA VIDA!
EDITORIAL CORRECTION: Yesterdays post was of an unusual bug in my bathroom, I tried to call it a stick or matchstick insect, but Kevin & Charles both correctly noticed that it is/was a spider: 

It’s a spider – 8 legs
Insects have 6 legs                        THANKS KEVIN!

AND LATER: A note from Charles Parker with the same 8-leg, 6-leg story! Did I know that? 🙂
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Matchstick Insect or SPIDER?

Last night on wall in my bathroom. I left him there.

This morning he had moved to my bath towel.
I removed him before my shower.  🙂

“Matchstick” is not a conclusive identification, but the closest I could find online. He is not in my books. There is also a “Stick Insect” in the dry savannas of Guanacaste, but they aren’t suppose to live here and in photos they seem to have skinnier bodies. And I don’t think it is a spider. Anyone who really knows what it is, please contact me, charlie@charliedoggett.net.

Emailed from Kevin Hunter: 
It’s a spider – 8 legs
Insects have 6 legs

THANKS KEVIN! You are right!

AND LATER: A note from Charles Parker with the same 8-leg, 6-leg story! Did I know that? 🙂

If you want to live and thrive, let the spider run alive.
~American Quaker Saying

And oh yes, I have a photo gallery of Costa Rica Insects

and separate gallery of Costa Rica Butterflies & Moths

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Clean Rivers Needed Everywhere!

Sign on one of the streets I walk on
between my house and downtown.

Roughly translated, the sign in Spanish says in English:

If we want clean rivers, do not pollute.

ADECA is doing a good job in Atenas of helping people be aware of their environment and the individual’s responsibility to not polute which is a problem here like everywhere. I look forward to finding more of these signs around town, maybe for different purposes like the one I shared earlier on Trees.