Category: Trees

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House Tour – Outside Today

Here’s a few views of the outside of my house and some of the new plants I got today. Tomorrow I will show the inside rooms.

My favorite room in the house is actually outside, my balcony, deck, patio.
This tile floor is throughout the house and outside walkways around three sides.
Nice! Plus the wooden ceiling is throughout the house.

105 Calle Roca Verde, one of the few houses in Atenas with a house number!
I’m the house on right behind trees, Don & Linda to left with carport and
our landlord lives on top of the hill behind us. I guard the gate, ha, ha!
There is also a gate to get inside the development with a real guard 24/7.

View of my house from street. The three little decorative palms in front were
added today to replace the three that died from lack of water in dry season.
I plan to make watering plants a major dry season activity!
You can barely see the Red Palm planted at end of balcony &
a tall, skinny Guarumo Tree in front of balcony.

You have already seen my new entry garden, but
we planted ground cover today that should spread fast.

Three Fishtail Palms and a Banana Plant (on right) were planted today as a screen
in front of my bedroom window (right) and guest room (left) for privacy
on this street side. They will fill in and spread in a month or two.
And maybe I’ll be eating the bananas by Christmas!  🙂
The driveway and entry side. The entry hall is to left by garden, but I mainly
use the balcony at right as my main entrance. This may be the least interesting
side of house, but my new entry garden is going to change that! Pot plants on
this wall would block the tile walkway, except maybe at that corner on patio.
I’m making it my home and so for love it inside and out! It is just right for me.

Tomorrow I’ll show you around inside the house as it is now decorated. My art may arrive this week, but I will probably add only a few pieces around a well decorated house! Buenas Noches!

Tonight’s sunset colored the clouds in the north. Beautiful! Each evening a new surprise!
How did I ever live without a balcony? This is my cathedral!
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Unprepared for First Rain

Yellow Bells Trees Shedding Blooms
Sunny Sidewalk in Atenas

I walk in the sunshine under the Yellow Bell trees for a late lunch and early dinner out to try the ribs at the Don Yayo Chicharonerra Cafe. Beautiful day with some rain clouds in the sky like we’ve had for weeks with no rain, so of course it will not rain. Well, while eating we got our first rain of the year (not counting one little shower) and it was a “gully washer” as we would say back in Arkansas. I took a photo but rain doesn’t seem to show up in my photos. The streams and canyons were gushing as I walked home.

We were very dry and having grass fires, so we really needed the rain! But it was so unexpected that I left my apartment windows open AND my laundry drying out on the balcony! Guess what? Some floors got mopped and my clothes went back through the spin cycle with hopefully some sun tomorrow. This is a case for the electric dryer in my new house and almost reason enough by itself for the move!  🙂   Can hardly wait!

Then after clean up of the rain, I got this “After the Rain” photo of rain fog on the horizon. Hope I get as many photo ops from the new balcony! I just love nature, even in the middle of a town.

“After the Rain” from my balcony, Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica
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Ripening Mangoes & Coffee Research

The most eaten fruit in the world!
This tree has red or purple ones, while some are turning yellow or orange.
Shot from my balcony, Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica

One website lists 4 different cultivars of mangoes in Costa Rica:

I believe my photo above is of the Tommy Atkins variety (purple). On the property here (formerly a mango farm) there is at least one other variety or cultivar. It is turning yellow & orange which I think is the Hayden. A lot of the different varieties were developed in Florida, trying to create year around crops. 

This Ojochal blog declares Mango “King of the Fruit World” listing health benefits and describing the 4 cultivars.

Nature’s Pride (a distributor) has lots of recipes and some “How to Prepare” videos

This “Fruit of the Month” article has a couple of mango recipes.

I have been eating a mango a day recently and keep a bottle of mango pulp in the frig for making one of four smoothie-type fruit drinks I have at least one of every day: mango, guanabana, mora (blackberry), and pina (pineapple). The mangoes that fall from the trees are bruised on one side and I cut that side off before eating the rest of it. I can get better ones in the market that aren’t bruised but were picked ripe or near-ripe. There is nothing better than a tree-ripened mango! I said the same thing when I lived in The Gambia.

And by the way – I signed the contract on the rental house Tuesday. Move a week from Thursday, 23 April. The virtual tour of my new house is still on the Realtor’s site for now. It will be taken down eventually.

And for you STARBUCKS COFFEE LOVERS: Starbucks Costa Rica Coffee Research Farm is
supposedly trying to help coffee growers raise disease-resistant coffee plants IF they will sell to Starbucks at ridiculously low prices – American ingenuity or greed? Coffee farmers have to eat too!

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Caring for Nature

Celebrate Your Life
Care for Nature

I recently noticed this sign nailed to a tree in Central Park Atenas below some air plants. Costa Ricans are known for celebrating and enjoying life! And the country is a haven for nature unlike most others. Maybe someone put this sign here to educate the youth who hang out in the park a lot, since many of them are more interested in things than nature. As a nature-lover I’m glad to see it anyway.

The government and tourism leadership are working to make Costa Rica one of the “greenest” tourist countries in the world. Maybe now they will work harder on educating the local people concerning littering and misuse of things like the greywater I wrote about earlier. There is not much they can do about volcanic ash, but at least it is fairly rare with some volcanoes erupting only every 400 years. All of these little environmental concerns are important because together with the daily destruction of forests by man’s hunger for wood, land, and “progress,” we are systematically destroying the world that God made for us. The “care for nature” is still minimal in our world, even in Costa Rica. May we all celebrate life by caring for nature!

Now this good news as it was reported in “Costa Rica Insider” one of the newsletters I get:

100% renewable energy

More exciting news recently out of Costa Rica. The country’s electric utility company, ICE (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad) announced that during the first 75 days of 2015, the country had been running completely on renewable energy resources—with no burning of fossil fuels needed to generate electricity. The primary source is hydroelectric (Lake Arenal was actually created to power a hydroelectric plant), followed by geothermal (all that volcanic activity underground comes in handy), wind, and a good bit of solar, too.
Costa Rica has set an ambitious goal of being completely carbon neutral for its power generation by 2021. And it already generates more than 90% of its power on average through renewable sources.
Ticos and expats are psyched. And the achievement has also attracted attention from environmental watchers and media organizations from around the world.

“We cannot think too highly of nature, nor too humbly of ourselves.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832)
 

 

“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.” 

 

― Chris Maser, Forest Primeval: The Natural History of an Ancient Forest

 

 

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Cashew Fruit

Cashew Fruit is ripening on trees around Atenas now.
Photographed from my balcony, Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica

This shot was made from about 50 meters away on a tree in a neighbor’s yard, shot from my balcony! The fruit reminds you of a red or yellow (come in both colors) bell pepper except for the seed or nut that hangs below it. Only one nut per fruit. No wonder cashews are somewhat expensive. Read about them in this Wikipedia article. New uses for the fruit itself are being developed, including one by Pepsi Cola. It is not a major export from Costa Rica. They grow in most tropical climes and we even had them in The Gambia. Most of what you get in the states probably come from India, Indonesia or Nigeria, where they are big exports. We stick with exporting bananas, pineapples, and coffee here! 
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Yellow Trees Now!

Golden Shower Tree or Cassia Fistula
On Highway 3 east of Atenas, Costa Rica

 

“Yellow Bells,” “Trumpet Bush” or officially Tecoma Stans
Zoomed in on one of the mountain sides from my front balcony

Earlier I showed orange-blooming Poro Tree around here, then the bright Pink Trumpet Tree, and there are now a bunch of yellow-blooming trees, two kinds! The first one above is an imported Asian ornamental tree that looks like a yellow lilac tree with delicate flowers hanging down, the one along the highway above. The other has clusters of bell-shaped flowers like this one off my back balcony. And remember, we are near the end of the dry season with no rain since November! Amazing!

 

Yellow Bells behind my apartment at Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas
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Tarcoles Trees

Palms and a Tour Boat like the one we were on

In case you are tired of birds, here’s some trees! But I do have more bird photos to share if nothing exciting happens around home the next few days.  🙂  Here are 5 trees photographed from our boat and I’m sorry I haven’t researched the proper names of any except the one already photographed in Atenas. I just like looking at trees regardless what they are called!  🙂  Always, you can click a photo to see it larger.

 

The shapes, the designs, the colors, the strength, all awe me!

 

Pink Trumpet Tree or Roble de Sabana
See earlier posts: one from balcony and one up close.
It seems to be this month’s blooming tree, like Poro last month.

 

Lone Wolf!

 

“Umbrella Tree” said our guide.
Look close for cow under it on left, avoiding the sun.

My Trip Advisor Review of this trip with photos!

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Stumbled Upon Yesterday’s Tree

Pink trumpet tree or Roble de sabana
My apartment complex entrance is 100 meters to the left

Walking back from town today I suddenly realized I was walking across the street from the tree I posted yesterday as shot from my balcony. It is located just after I duck my head to walk under this bougainvillea over the sidewalk (photo below). I’ll try to create an album of neighborhood flowers soon. There are many!

Bougainvillea Arch over Atenas Sidewalk
“The earth laughs in flowers.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Pink Trumpet Tree

Roble de sabana or Pink trumpet tree

The Pink Trumpet Tree (in English) or Roble de sabana (in Spanish) and the scientific or Latin name of Tabebuia rosea is a popular flowering three for this elevation of the Central Valley hills of 698 meters or 2300 feet. This is a shot from my balcony of two of these trees in a neighbor’s yard. You can see a lot living on a hill!   🙂   I love the views from my hill and balcony! Remember a couple of weeks ago the orange flowering Poro Tree I shared? Those orange flowers are fading now as different blossoms appear elsewhere. After a whole year I should have a good flowering tree collection – Photos, smiles, and memories!

“You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness – ignorance, credulity – helps your enjoyment of these things.”

― Henry David Thoreau
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After the Rain

An unusual Dry Season Rain moves over the mountains this afternoon.
It was the first rain in my nearly 8 weeks here. Rainy Season starts in May.

 

Sunset Saturday Night – No two Are alike!

All my maintenance issues were solved over a week ago and the management is really looking good for the apartment complex – but you know – even if they weren’t, I might want to stay here just for the views from my front porch! I’ve never had front porch views like this!

And if you start comparing and doubt they are all made from the same balcony, remember that I zoom in and out a lot AND occasionally use 3 photos merged, like the rain one at top here. For example, the large lone tree on the left in the top photo is the same tree barely protruding the skyline in the bottom photo, just smaller below. 🙂   Fun!   Pura Vida!