Category: Garden

Both my gardens and ones I visit

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WILDFLOWERS – Tennessee & Costa Rica

Okay, yesterday I compared waterfalls so today as I finished my last gallery in the Pre-Costa Rica TENNESSEE Photos gallery, I must do the same with wildflowers. The last gallery for the state of Tennessee is simply Tennessee WILDFLOWERS and again I tried to pick just one photo from each of about 150 species of wildflowers for this gallery with more variety or multiple images in the location galleries where they first appear. The wildflowers were another of the many elements of nature that I enjoyed during my 37 years in Tennessee with an amazing variety!

Shot with Velvia Film
Tennessee Coneflower  —  Growing across from my Nashville row house in the Bicentennial Capital Mall State Park where I spent many hours with nature.

And the featured photo at top is on a huge Magnolia tree in the same park near my house. The beauty of nature is everywhere!

-o-

Similarly I have enjoyed the beautiful tropical wildflowers (most of my garden is wildflowers). See my Costa Rica through regional flower galleries in my big gallery of flowers I call FLORA & FOREST Costa Rica. Click and enjoy! I’ve only been here 5 and a half years, but spend most of my time with nature now! Just one of the many reasons I love being Retired in Costa Rica!

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Growing in a ditch along my street uphill from my house. Pura vida!

 

“Do you know why wildflowers are the most beautiful blossoms of all, my son?”

Dain shook his little head.

Soft waxen curls blew forward in the breeze as she lifted her storm-gray eyes to gaze out over the sea of petals. “Wildflowers are the loveliest of all because they grow in uncultivated soil, in those hard, rugged places where no one expects them to flourish. They are resilient in ways a garden bloom could never be. People are the same, son—the most exquisite souls are those who survive where others cannot. They root themselves, along with their companions, wherever they are, and they thrive.”

― Micheline Ryckman, The Maiden Ship

 

¡Pura vida!

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Poanes monticola?

Not Spanish, but the technical name for the new butterfly or skipper I discovered today in my garden with the book’s common name of “Evergreen Poan” as closest match in A Swift Guide to Butterflies of Mexico and Central America.

Below are my photos from a walk in the garden this morning and here are some websites that tell you more about this particular species and they say it is only in Mexico, but I think it may be the same or a close cousin!   🙂   And the only ones I find with the “frosting” on the wings are this and a Zebulon which is not as good a match. Mine seems to have longer antennae than the ones on these sites, but otherwise almost the same:     –   Naturalista    –   iNaturlist   –   Wikipedia (Poanes in general)   –   enciclovida   – Not much info out there with most of these sites using the same info and photos!  Hmmmm.  If you think you know the identification, please let me know!

My New Skipper-Butterfly

Check out my Butterfly Gallery

¡Pura Vida!

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Flower on the Walk

I’m pretty sure I’ve shown this flower before and still don’t know its name, but like it! It is one I regularly pass by on my walks to town, which is only about 2 times a week now. Staying inside or in my yard mostly and may start showing more of my own flowers again as I did 2 days ago with “Mini-Art”, though most from my garden will be repeats for the blog. 

And then there’s my FLORA & FOREST Galleries if you want more!   🙂 

PLUS

Today is Earth Day 2020

Join in Earth Day Live: April 22-24

Earth Day Live is a three-day live stream and an epic community mobilization to show support for our planet, through which millions of people can tune in online alongside activists, celebrities, musicians, and more. The massive live event — which starts on April 22 and concludes on April 24 — is organized by climate, environmental, and Indigenous groups within the US Climate Strike Coalition and Stop The Money Pipeline Coalition.

And it features a very special Costa Rican!

 

¡Pura Vida!

 

if you vote in the United States — Before it is too late!

 

And read the book   THE FUTURE WE CHOOSE

 

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Mini-Art in my Garden

All art is but imitation of nature.

Seneca the Younger
No new flower or wildlife in these photos, but each one is a new expression of “nature as art” as I walked through my garden Sunday with camera in hand. I love doing this occasionally and though maybe the same subjects, the art is different each time!

And that Yigüirro is singing his heart out every day now “calling the rains in” which happens every April in anticipation of the May rains or the beginning of the rainy season, our winter here. That is why he is the national bird of Costa Rica.

See my FLORA & FOREST Gallery for more flowers or Birds Gallery or Butterfly Gallery. 

¡Pura Vida!

🙂

 

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“There’s No Place Like Home”

Or almost no place better for birds than my home in the Roca Verde Neighborhood of Atenas, Costa Rica. My long-time intentions to do a photo book of birds photographed at home just got fulfilled!

Roca Birds Book
For preview, click image or address below:

Check out the free preview of this book of 80 photos of more than 40 species of birds found in my garden and neighborhood. Plus this book is bigger than my travel series books, a full 8 x 10 inches, making it acceptable as a “Coffee Table Book.”   🙂    The hardcover edition is printed on a higher quality of lustre photo paper, though the paperback edition is nice on standard paper. Enjoy!   🙂

 

https://www.blurb.com/b/10034408-roca-verde-birds

 

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

~John Muir

¡Pura Vida!

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Moving furniture

When you are forced to stay home I guess it is normal to change things in your house as well as to play on the computer!   🙂

For the 5 years I’ve been in this house I’ve always had my breakfast table at the left or NW corner of my terrace (best mountains vista) and the two rockers at the other end, nearer the driveway, SE corner. Since I’ve gone to sitting in the refinished rockers a little more now, I decided to move them to the left with a better view of the mountains beyond Atenas. Next I will ask my gardener to replace that old-looking plant in the frog pot. Of course I’m old-looking too, but don’t replace me just yet!   🙂

Rearranged Porch or Terrace

 

 

You will notice on the photos title I used “porch” which is what I grew up calling it in south Arkansas, while later, by my Tennessee days, I called it a “deck” and now here in Costa Rica it is called a “terrace” or la terraza en español, maybe because most floors are made of tile here? And I evolve with my surroundings!   🙂

Coming eyeball to eyeball with a hummingbird on my terrace is as exciting to me as any celebrity I’ve met . . .

~Lesley Nicol

¡Pura Vida!

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Butterflies

These two common butterflies were photographed in my garden last Friday – not brilliant but always interesting as all wildlife! See more of my butterfly photos in my Butterflies Gallery.

Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine.     

~Jeffrey Glassberg

🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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Taking the kids for a walk?

Well . . .  that is sort of what it looked like this morning on my return home from birding on Calle Nueva (our nearby country lane). Birding was great but I still don’t have all the wild bird photos processed, so here’s the domesticated ones I saw!   🙂

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There were more kids than this but in spite of Mom’s efforts, they were scattered afar!

 

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And their strutting father.

Chicken Joke

¡Pura Vida!

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Less Wind – More Birds!

But that was only the case for an hour or so Sunday morning for my early breakfast around 6 AM. By 7:30 or 8:00 the wind was blowing like normal this time of year, It is windy mid-December to Mid-March or later and I’m guessing later this year because the wind has been stronger. Since the “Windy Season” overlaps the “Dry Season” it creates a recipe for brush or grass fires, especially later in the season like right now. We had our annual grass fires in Roca Verde a week or so ago, so not as much dry grass left to burn. (I water my grass!) And as usual, we were fortunate to have no house on fire. Our local Atenas Bomberos (Firemen) are super good at stopping the fires quickly.

And my four morning birds are just ones that are very common in my yard, but it was nice to see them in my Cecropia tree at breakfast for a change! Maybe I should eat earlier every morning since it is less windy early.   🙂     They were . . .

Clay-colored Thrush called Yigüirro here, the national bird; Blue-gray Tanager;  Tropical Kingbird; and the featured photo, Rufous-naped Wren. Links are to eBird pages on those birds.

4 Breakfast Birds

 

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?     ~JESUS, Matthew 6:26

¡Pura Vida!

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Gray & Yellow Mornings

Gray-crowned Yellowthroat

Both yesterday and today I went out around my house looking for birds about 6:20 to 6:40 AM, before breakfast. Both mornings I found birds with gray heads and yellow fronts! Yesterday (before going to Bosque Municipal) I got distant shots of the above Gray-crowned Yellowthroat (link is to Cornell’s “Neo-Tropical Birds”) seen in the cow pasture across the street from my house, my first of this species here, though I got better photos at Curi-Cancha Reserve, Monteverde last year, also in a meadow. Check ’em out!

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Gray-crowned Yellowthroat (different photo) in cow pasture in front of my house.

Gray-capped Flycatcher

A more common or more frequently seen-by-me-bird is this common flycatcher which has gray & yellow coloring like the above but is much larger. To learn more about him from Cornell’s “Neo-Tropical Birds,” click this name link, Gray-capped Flycatcher or go see my Gray-capped Flycatcher Photo Gallery (better photos than this). There are around 50 different species of birds here labeled some kind of “Flycatcher,” so a lot of variety! And yes, they do eat flies and other insects!    🙂

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Gray-capped Flycatcher, in my garden, Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica

 

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

― Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds

¡Pura Vida!