On the hotel property’s “Wildlife Refuge” or nature trail is a “Butterfly Garden” like you find all over Costa Rica, a big, high ceiling cage with lots of flowering plants and continuously hatching butterflies. Here’s some of the ones I saw there today in a simple little slideshow. I do not have my butterfly book with me, meaning I could have mis-labeled one or two and there is one I have no idea of the name and there was no attendant to help me label them. Most I already knew from all I have photographed all over Costa Rica. Enjoy what Robert Frost calls “Flying Flowers!”
Today’s Butterflies
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“Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Last year after Christmas I took the potted Poinsettia I had had inside and planted it in my garden. When I recently asked my gardeners to “thin out” my garden, well . . . they really thinned it out including the removal of my poinsettia which was not doing well anyway.
So today I looked for another poinsettia in town and found only one little plant store that had any and they were expensive, but I got two anyway. They add to the “Christmas Spirit” around my house and I already had in mind putting them immediately in my garden, which I did. Well, the rain seems to have stopped (we might get 1 or 2 more) and the wind has started blowing (think March in the states). The petals or really leaves on the poinsettia are be thrashed by the wind and already look weathered.
Oh well, I meant well and in my thinned out garden there is not much color now, so they have been added to my two other now-blooming red flowers: Red Ginger and Torch Ginger or in Costa Rica El bastón de emperador. So maybe all this red in my gardens is my Christmas color for this year! 🙂
The red of the toyshops on a dark winter’s afternoon, Of Father Christmas and the robin’s breast? Or green? Green of holly and spruce and mistletoe in the house, dark shadow of summer in leafless winter? One might plainly add a romance of white, fields of frost and snow; thus white, green, red- reducing the event to the level of a Chianti bottle. But many will say that the significant colour is gold, gold of fire and treasure, of light in the winter dark; and this gets closer, For the true colour of Christmas is Black. Black of winter, black of night, black of frost and of the east wind, black of dangerous shadows beyond the firelight.
Yes, it’s “Spring” here (la primavera) and almost the beginning of “Summer” (el verano) or Dry Season which starts in December. There are some trees and flowers that bloom this time of year while other bloom at the end of dry season and I can’t explain why because I don’t know. 🙂
I call these my “Yellow Bell Trees” because the flowers are bell-shaped, but that is not the name of them and I can’t seem to get an agreement here on what their English name is. I recently lost two of these trees, so less yellow this year in my garden, but it calls for a Haiku anyway:
I have been playing around with writing Haiku about Costa Rica Nature for nearly 3 years now and this is my little collection of poems, each printed on one of my photos. I’m not a poet, but it was fun to do and I may continue trying from time to time. I write the American 2-3-2 syllables style of Haiku but like the original Japanese Haiku they only describe nature.
On the hill above my little casita are blooming some brilliant orange African Tulip Trees (an immigrant or invasive species?) and above those the ever-present pink-to-purple bougainvillea which I see here through the limbs of my Guarumo or Cecropia tree. Having “colorful neighbors” can be a plus! And colorful flowers add to my happiness! 🙂
Just living is not enough…
one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
~Hans Christian Andersen
Flowers help boost happiness and I was just introduced to a new website that you might want to check out: Garden & Happyfor a little boost in your happiness, try gardening! 🙂
Or in English it is most often called “Torch Ginger” and is one of many plants and trees growing on the steep hill that is my “Front Yard” or what is seen from the street.
This shot I took with my good camera earlier on the same plant and the ones below I took today with my new cheaper cell phone camera that’s not as good as my old cell phone camera and/or the colors and looks change on these flowers. 🙂
El bastón de emperador “bud: or baby
El bastón de emperador
El bastón de emperador plant seen from my terrace
My “Front Yard” seen from the street
Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
“Pitahaya” is not a Spanish word but rather a word from the indigenous people of Costa Rica and what everyone calls this unusual fruit or flower growing on a cactus plant. It is used most popularly in bebidas or fruit drinks like American Smoothies and the fruit is called “Dragon Fruit” or “Pitaya” in the states. The inside is gelatin like and pink in color with tiny black seeds and very sweet.
The photo is of one David brought to Spanish class the other day and I thought I would share another one of out unusual foods here in Costa Rica (and all over Latin America and in Asia). Read about it on Wikipedia (en español) or in English as pitaya/dragon fruit.
Photo of flower Costa Ricans call “Once de Abril” (11th of April) to commemorate the only war and battle Costa Rica ever fought and of course won with the heroic help of Juan Santamaria (name of San Jose Airport). It is so delicate with such tiny blooms like Santamaria was just a boy.
See more tiny pleasures in my photo gallery Flora & Forest.
The other day I only had a photo of one bloom. Here is what the whole plant in a pot looks like. It is a nice pot plant for the terrace and has been blooming almost constantly during the rainy season. I won’t expect that during the dry season. It likes the morning sun.
