Drop Dead Gorgeous

So many tropical plants - So much time

 For a slideshow of these pictures, 

(without the hilarious comments) 

click on any photo

and use your left and right arrows to navigate the viewing.

We've been collecting pictures of interesting, odd and beautiful plant life on our travels.  Some are in gardens or cultivated areas, others are in the wild - though we've seen most all of them in the wild.  Seeing a new type of plant or flower is the height of excitement for me.  As of yet we know very few of their names.

Resembles a smaller, purple elephant ear plant.  May have edible roots.

Maybe a member of the heliconia family, though smaller than most.

Pine cone ginger: growing straight up out of the wet jungle.

Small orchid-like flowers poke out of the cups.

On a rock by a waterfall in Panama

By a dirt road on Volcan Baru

These were on a vine growing out of a tree in a jungle.

Amidst hillside bramble

Ornamental banana flower?  Or a different type of banana?

Wild ground orchids on a mountain hillside.

That is: small wild ground orchids

Stumbled across this one in the jungle.

Garden bouquet

Morning Glories in morning sun

Fingerling pink bananas.  Birds love them.

Just different

Heliconia outside the kitchen window.  Pretty.

All the yellow ones will be over ripe tomorrow.  How many can you eat in a day?  These grew at our current homesite - with LOTS more on the way.  Banana bread only requires about 3 bananas.  Now what?

I love these long-leafed plants!

Walkways around the Artistic Cabina property.

More walkways with hanging heliconia.

Ideas?  Nope.  On some property we checked out.

Houseplant without a house.

Head poking out of the bushes

I don't know.  I just don't

Ubiquitous bougainvillaea - queen of warm climates

Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia)

Ferns, ferns - EVERYWHERE

Native plant starts for reforesting. 

Just a nice entrance

A stand of heliconia

Green coffee beans in our neighborhood

Sometimes you just can't tell what you're looking at

Another type of heliconia.

Fairies on stems

Okay, I have no idea what it's called but its awesome!

Sweet

If you're interested, we can post more pictures of exciting and strange plants in the future.  I'm personally fascinated by strange plants.  I'm sure my brothers and my friend Toni will like these.

Hey, I know:  Jeff and I could set up a rare tropical fruit, flower and plant botanical garden in southern Costa Rica.  That sounds like more fun than I've had in a very long time!!

That's MISTER Grasshopper to You!

Without a clothes dryer, climate dictates the time to do laundry. Here it's predictably sunny and warm in the mornings and, just as predictably, rainy and cool in the afternoons. 

So on laundry day, we wake up at the crack of dawn and get crackin'.  With luck, the clothes might get dry before the tropical downpour begins.

We're using a Tico-style clothes washer kept in the open carport (a used machine but newly acquired). To our American eyes, this thing is pretty odd - and questionable.  Basically it has two separate compartments: a top-load washer next to a high RPM spinner - and apparently the lid to the washer has been lost. 

Yes, it's a questionable device! - but it's also a huge improvement (and relief) over hand washing and hand wringing our towels, pants, and shirts.  Before this washer showed up, I longed for a crank wringer washer like Mom used in the 50's.

In Costa Rica, electricity costs twice as much per kilowatt hour as it does in Seattle.  That's why using an electric clothes dryer isn't feasible.  Air drying is how people dry their clothes here - and the process requires about 4 hours of sun and some creativity.  

The best bet for drying is to lay the clean clothes and linens all over the concrete picnic table and benches - hotty-hot-hot from the tropical sun.

One neighbor blanketed a corner of his yard with rounded river rocks and throws his fresh wash over them. We like to think of boulders and concrete picnic tables as very good solar clothes dryers. Of course we see other families drying clothes draped over any imaginable object: bushes, cars, barbed wire fences, tree branches, grass lawns, bicycles - and clothes lines.
But I digress. 

This post is about MISTER Grasshopper. 

This morning as I was checking the clothes roasting on our picnic table I nearly stepped on him. All 3 inches of him. So I ran inside for a plastic container, caught him in it, and showed Starr. 

She really likes surprises like that. 

Before releasing him we wanted some good photos to show you. We debated whether we could transfer him into our empty Mennonite goat yogurt jar, and decided that was not happening.  

We'd have to touch him. He might jump.

So we put a clear pyrex baking dish over him instead to take these pictures.

Enjoy.

Here's our "Tico-style" combination washer/spin dryer.
A new one will set you back about 140,000 Colones or U$280.

I'm sure he eats a LOT - and I should have stepped on him rather than let him go.  
But he was so beautiful - and pleasant - and thoughtful. 

FYI: The Local Bus System - New Protocols

In order to prepare you for your trip to visit us in Costa Rica, it is very helpful that you become familiar with these changes in local bus protocol.

The "colectivo", or local bus, has always been the primary way to travel in Latin America.

While the long haul buses compete with airlines by installing plush reclining seats and showing movies ...

The colectivo bus remains ...

Simply a sad old re-purposed school bus. 

Minimalist conveyance in the extreme.

Diesel exhaust perpetrator deluxe. 

Spine-pounding butt-rocking E-ticket.

The Latin American substitute for Ann Landers.

The most fun you can have for 35 cents.

Well that's all starting to change. 
I'm not sure it's for the better.

Please View the VIDEO here.


Once you have absorbed this important information, please enjoy a few random photos ...

My li'l hummer.

My dinner.

Afternoon rain dumps another 5 inches.

My real estate agent.

I call this still-life composition "Computer with Salt".

My dinner.

Not real flashy. But hey at least he knows to stand still.
The friggin' Blue Morphos are manic.

The clay soil is brick red. 

Pinto loves to take me for walks.

Banana leaf squiggle.

No it's not!
Meet Yuca, the other white starch.