charliedoggett.net
Both my gardens and ones I visit
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| Yellow-billed Cuckoo My Garden in Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Yellow-billed Cuckoo My Garden in Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica |
This is another “first” bird for me which I saw today in a Yellow Bell Tree by my terrace. I had to share it first! Tomorrow I will explain why I went a week without a post. Then some more catch up!
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| Julia Butterfly My Garden, Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Polydamus Swallowtail My Garden, Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Statira Sulphur My Garden, Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| The Lehning’s and Charlie at El Restaurante La Carreta, Atenas, Costa Rica |
Finally I get a photo of Tim & Joan Lehning with children Hank, Maggie and David plus me included thanks to our friendly waiter at La Carreta. Tonight, Wednesday Dinner in town at one of my favorite restaurants.
Just for their arrival today, my neighbor and artist friend Anthony Jeroski finished the bird nest for my garden that lovingly holds the glass egg created by another artist friend in Nashville, Kevin Hunter. It goes well with the bird sculpture at the opposite end of the same garden. Is my garden developing a theme? |
| Step into my main garden from the driveway or back door of house. Surrounded by the trees and other flowers of neighbors. You know you are in a tropical place! |
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| Out my backdoor you are greeted by a pottery bird garden-art by Anthony. Anthony Jeroski will soon be moving into the house across the driveway since Don & Lynda just moved back to the states. Anthony & I have plans for a garden-art bird nest made of wood & wire that will feature a glass egg made by my Nashville friend Kevin Hunter. I think you will like it Kevin! |
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| Here a garden is really your whole yard and terrace and that is true for me. With watering during the dry season, my “front yard” jungle has grown, especially the Cecropia or Guarumo tree, many palms & flowers on a slope. |
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| One is a Nance Tree which by July will have little yellow fruits I can eat! |
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| Bougainvillea is blooming on my terrace and down below on the slope. There was not one here when I came and I consider it the quintessential tropical flower I got used to in Florida and The Gambia. I have two now! |
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| Once de Abril Planta or 11th of April Plant is what my gardener calls it. It is becoming very tall and full shrub, adding to my privacy screen and it blooms year around with seasonal yellow berries that birds eat quickly. It is one of my favorite plants and was a surprise gift from my gardener. The 11th of April is Juan Santamaria Day, our only war hero. He was the drummer boy who stopped the American Walker from taking over Costa Rica as his personal slave state. DO YOU SEE THE BEE ON THE FLOWER? Click image for larger view. |
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| The largest of my 4 Heliconia plants. |
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| The brightest of my Heliconia plants. |
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| The smallest of my Heliconia plants. |
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| And the most prolific of the 4 Heliconia plants. It greets you at the driveway next to the Plumbago. |
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| Red Ginger is all over my garden & prolific. |
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| Lantanas are my border and called multiple things here. Grow fast! I have to cut them back regularly or they become shrubs! That is something like a Florida White Butterfly here today. |
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| A type of Petunia that blooms abundantly every morning, then by mid-afternoon the blooms have all dropped to the ground. More the next morning! Year-around. |
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| Flame Vine in English or Triquitraque in Spanish which literally means “firecracker” in Spanish |
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| Flame Vine or Triquitraque |
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| Plumbago is beautiful and my most prolific bloomer. My background plant. But it grows so fast I have to cut it back every few months, losing some color. But it blooms year-around and especially on the new growth after trimming. |
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| “Crown of Thorns” is what Lynda called it. I bought at Don & Lynda’s Moving Sale. |
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| Aloe Vera – I’m always ready for burn! 🙂 |
Sorry I made so many photos this morning! And that is not all of my garden! 🙂 I love it!
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| Julia Butterfly My Garden, Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Polydamas Swallowtail Butterfly My Garden, Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Plumbago |
I think most of my photos have been of the total garden or yard and not each blossom. So here are some close-ups of a sort, zoomed in on with my Canon Rebel and 75-300 zoom lens. Enjoy!
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| Flame Vine or Triquitraque |
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| My large Heliconia There are so many varieties that I hesitate to identify the species |
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| This large Heliconia has seeds in it that birds eat or they grow to new plants |
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| There are 6 varieties of this small yellow Heliconia growing in wild and cultivated. I have two . . . |
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| This is my other small yellow Heliconia |
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| Then this small red Heliconia that is finally blooming again. None open yet. |
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| The almost constantly blooming Red Ginger here with a fully open bloom and . . . |
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| A Red Ginger bud just opening and growing sideways I cut all of mine back and so they are just now starting to fill with blooms again. |
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| One of the many colors of Lantanas I have as a border. They are coming back strong after I cut them to the ground 2 months ago. |
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| Porter Weed for Hummingbirds I have pink and purple. |
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| A special Costa Rican variety of Petunia that blooms heavy each morning and then all blooms drop off in the afternoon to none, nada! Every day! It is kind of like the Morning Glories my landlord has growing on his fence. They too bloom every morning only. |
The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly. ~William Wordsworth
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| Polydamas Swallowtail Butterfly My Garden in Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica |
Well, the butterflies are starting to come! And this is the first other than the Banded Peacock which was the only one to stay all summer (Your northern winters are our windy summers.). You may remember that I posted photos of this Polydamas Swallowtail Last June – not the most colorful but a butterfly!
“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 (One of my favorite little books!)
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| Year-around blooming flowers for my terrace rocking chair view. |
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| And behind my terrace planters are three layers of plants in my yard and another in the neighbor’s. Soon we will be separated by a jungle! 🙂 One of the round pots I moved from inside because of a lack of sun there. The other had ornamental grass which I will replace with something green. Like my garden, the yard and terrace are always a work in progress! And my poinsettias are still blooming to the right at terrace entrance! |
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!
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| 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! 🙂 |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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! |
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| 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! 🙂
4:30 AM – Up for shower, breakfast and walk to the bus station
6:15 AM – Bus to San Jose
7:45 AM – I exit bus at northeast corner of Parque Sabana, 4 blocks from lawyer
Appointment is at 8:30 AM, so second breakfast at Soda Tapia (famous!)
8:30 AM – Meet attorney Jose Pablo Carter at his office 150 meters east of Soda Tapia
9:00 AM – We arrive in his car at Police Station with maybe 15 people ahead of us
We complete paper work and then I do the musical chair thing like at bank
This was just one long row of chairs. As a person is served we all move up
the chair line until I was next to be served. About a 25 minute wait.
Maybe 15 minutes of a guy two-finger typing all my info in a computer
He glues the three photos made back in February to 3 different forms
Then gives me all my paperwork and sends me to the fingerprint girl
I learned later she was new. She did 3 fingers then new form, start over
because she did one of my fingers twice 🙂
Then she gave me two of the photo/thumb print cards to take to my attorney
He gave one back to her and explained to her where it went (Wow!) Learner!
10:30 AM – We drive away from police station and he says no one knows how much longer
I will have to wait, maybe 2 months. But we have made some progress!
10:45 AM – He is taking me to a taxi stand to go to bus station because he has a meeting.
Then he sees a taxi, flags him down and I move to the taxi headed for the
Parada de Autobus de TUASA – there are about a dozen bus stations depending
on where you are going. I go to Coca Cola Station for Atenas bus but I need
to go to Alajuela to pick up a package at Aerocasillas. So I go to the
Parada de TUASA for the next bus to Alajuela. 5 minute wait!
By noon I’m in Alajuela with my package ordered from Amazon of a Hypoallergenic & Bedbug proof mattress cover and pillow covers which I have not found here. Then a quick quesadilla and I have only a 5 minute wait for bus to Atenas (Lucky? God’s will?). Near the bus station in Atenas is my primary hardware store where I find they have only 1 soaker hose left, so I get it and try Coope Hardware and they have none (I need 2). I call a taxi and tell him what I want and he takes me to a third hardware store (ferreteria) and they have one left. Great! I just bought all (both) the soaker hoses available in Atenas! 🙂
I go home and install them in two gardens and water the gardens. My front yard and trees had a sprinkler system installed yesterday by my gardeners at a really good price, about what I paid for the two soaker hoses! Now my yard, trees and gardens are ready for the dry season without me spending two hours every two days holding a hose to them. Bear in mind that it may not rain again here until May!
When finished, it was 5:30 and I suddenly remembered I had a 5:00 Spanish class! Oh well! I am exhausted and will catch up next week. 🙂
Today is Friday and I got more cash for Angel Tree expenses (trying 3 ATMs before one worked!), paid one Angel Tree bill, got groceries, and I’m staying at home the rest of today! Susan picks me up at 6:50 tomorrow morning for Angel Tree party preparation. She and I are in charge of moving 300 wrapped gifts from Su Espacio to the church salon. Other volunteers will help. Then a fast-moving party and I’m on bus back to Alajuela for a rent car. I like to get a car the day before needed to get used to the car and make sure everything works! 🙂 I’m excited about experiencing another new birding place starting Sunday! Rancho Naturalista. My happy feet are busy feet! 🙂 And when the bone spur in my heel hurts, I take an anti-inflammatory Rx the doctor prescribed and do great! The heel cushion in a real shoe helps also! 🙂 Wear my sandals only around the house now.
