Sunday At Our House

Sundays are very quiet in our neighbourhood. Well, except for the occasional squabbles between our resident white winged doves and ground doves. I scatter seed out for them and the ground doves, who are much smaller, get chased away and yelled at. There are five species of ground doves in this country and I think ours are the common ground dove.

One pair of white winged doves decided we are nice people and our house is a fine place to raise a family. They have built a nest on a small ledge just outside our loggia.

The Mrs or Mr (who knows) on their nest.

Hubby (I guess) on our patio - they all look the same.

It’s a flimsy nest, not more than sticks. The male brings them to the female and she builds the nest. Both sexes take turns incubating the eggs. I guess we’ll see the hatchlings in about twelve days.

I walked around our garden and took some photos.

Vanda orchid in flower.

Anthurium.

Baby mangoes - we are going to have a bumper crop this year.

A strawberry plant has popped up in one of the planters. It’s sending out lots of runners.

We have several rose bushes, nicely scented.

Flowering aloe vera.

It’s a warm afternoon and this ice cream was calling my name. Who could resist?

Enjoy your Sunday (or sundae if you want) everyone!

We’ve Moved On Up!!! - Part 2

Our new rental home is located in San Roque de Grecia. We have a typical Costa Rican address: “400 m. este de Restaurante La Paila, detrás del taller de aire acondicionado Serví-Frio”.

We are mostly settled in. Only a couple of bins left to sort through, put the contents away and then try to remember where I stowed what. We have found our gardener and housekeeper. They’ll both come every two weeks.

Part of the fun has been exploring the garden area and finding out what is growing. Fruit wise,  we have mora (a berry rather like a blackberry), a mango tree and an avocado tree, a couple of lime trees and what I think may be a limon mandarina - it is green on the outside and yellow on the inside. The mango tree has two almost ready to pick mangos and lots of tiny ones. No avocados as yet.

For herbs, there is a large rosemary bush and I have just planted dill and Italian parsley. Our garden is walled and slopes downward. Lots of truck tires have been situated to help prevent erosion. They are great for gardening and all of them are filled with soil so I will plant more herbs. I found several rose bushes, lots of crotons, some vanda orchids, and two Norfolk pines. There are lots of places for me to hang up my orchid collection.

Someone spent a lot of thoughtful time creating this garden. There are quite a few large lantana shrubs and they attract butterflies and hummingbirds. 

And now for the inside of our new house - 4 bedrooms, two baths, big kitchen and living room. Three, at least (end to end) car garage. Gas oven and six burners, gas dryer. Side by side refrigerator with ice maker, etc. Big round wooden table in kitchen with six chairs. The wood is beautiful - Costa Rican hardwood. Lots of counter space and cabinets. 

The appliances are top of the line.

My favourite part is the outdoor covered loggia which runs around two sides of the house.

Including indoor garage space, outdoor patio space and indoor living space … we have over 3,000 square feet for USD 850, furnished, utilities extra. The cost of utilities is much less. The stove and gas dryer rely on propane and not electricity. In our previous place, the stove and the dryer were electric, leading to a bill of about $100 USD per month. Our first bill here for electric for a month was about 25 USD - I was shocked.

Laneway to our house - garage entrance is on the right:

My outdoor painting area:

Living room: 

Lots of wall space to hang my paintings:

All the inside doors are like this - Costa Rican hardwood.

And, of course, room for my hammock:

More wall space for my art:

Kitchen - gas stove and microwave:

Kitchen table and my favourite refrigerator type:

One side of the loggia:

Click on images to enlarge.

Our Bountiful Backyard

We have a lovely, very quiet backyard at our new house. I put my hammock under the orange trees and out of the sun. It’s so peaceful reading a book there.

We also have a lot of fruit trees, as do most properties in Costa Rica or so it seems. At our previous house, we had mangoes, bananas and oranges - although the oranges were tart and didn’t peel easily. They were good for juicing though.

Now we have mangoes, bananas, coconuts and oranges - the kind with loose skins so they peel very easily. I guess they are mandarins.

Immature orange:

Mature orange:

Coconut tree:

Mangoes:

Bananas - not sure how we’ll get this bunch down. It’s up very high.

Saturday in Atenas

We needed to buy some things in Atenas today so decided to go into town and have breakfast at Cafe Cultura. I've mentioned this newly opened restaurant before in this blog and urge everyone to try it out.

We like to eat in the restaurant's walled backyard. They have tables with umbrellas set up on the grass and  the ambience is so nice. We both ordered the eggs Benedict with smoked salmon and fresh fruit - it's always good. Lance ordered one of their coffee drinks - you can't go wrong with them. I usually order a fresh fruit drink and this time chose one that is supposed to be good for the circulation.

Then off we went to Vargas, the Atenas hardware store. We had decided to buy a fruit picking basket and a long, telescoping pole to attach to the basket. Our mango tree is huge and we can't reach a lot of the mangoes that need picking without some help. The basket and pole work really well and I also used them to pick oranges from our orange tree. The Vargas folks are really helpful - they always make an effort to find what we are looking for.  Today our helper asked if we were Canadians so I guess we have an accent.

We also bought some fruit and vegetables from the street vendors - always a great deal and it's fun to practice Spanish this way.

My fruit basket and pole.

The pole when it is telescoped out - this was actually a subject of some amusement  as I got some wink winks from the hardware guys and ... well, I didn't understand all of what they said.

Quatro avocados - one mil (2 CAD)

Eleven tomatoes - one mil (2 CAD)

Tres strawberry baskets - one mil (2 CAD)

Restaurants and the Dry Season

Last Thursday, we met friends and enjoyed bocas and wine at Grego's, a bar and restaurant on highway 3 not far from Atenas.  Service and food is excellent. We sat outside on the covered patio, enjoyed the company, the weather and chatting with everyone.

It's close enough that we can walk down there, but thank goodness our friends drive us home (or we call a taxi) because it's all uphill going back to our house.

We now know why this is called the dry season - no rain since early November. Today I walked up the hill behind our house where our banana trees are and the ground is cracked and so dry. Everything was rustling in the wind and there is a lot of wind. The mango tree is flowering but also throwing tiny mangoes on the ground so I expect that is some sort of normal culling? The tree is huge and old and has survived for a long time so I guess it knows what it is doing.

After several months of clear blue skies all day long, now we notice that clouds are forming in the early afternoon. They look like they could be rain clouds, but not a drop falls and then they disappear in the late afternoon. I think we are experiencing the gradual transition into the green season.