Lagrimas de Maria … what simple beauty!

The rains have started and the grass is turning green poco a poco.  The lagrimas de Maria (Mary’s tears) have appeared overnight and are thick and colorful.  For being just 6-8 inches tall, they make quite an impact.  (And they don’t take any care or require a green thumb!)  There are taller varieties and darker colors of lagrimas, but these light pink shorties are great!

A bed of color under foot

Passion vine … the good news and bad news!

The passion vine is colorful and beautiful, but watch out.  It will take over everything within 10 feet of its long tendrils.  Hummingbirds love the blossoms and at times the vine has fruit, much like the granadilla, but not as sweet.

Passion vine

A green thumb or dumb luck?

Costa Rica is a country rife with color.  Trees bursting with bright orange, soft periwinkle and brilliant yellow blossoms dot the countryside in huge swatches of color during different seasons of the year.  These intense technicolor displays are not limited to trees alongside the road, however; multi-colored impatiens grow rampant in ditches, beside rocks, next to trickling streams and around fallen branches.  Mother Nature imposes herself upon the environment and produces lush vegetation in locations you would never expect anything but rocks to survive.  What a perfect place for someone with no plant knowledge – you can look like you have a degree in horticulture with little or no effort.  I am proof positive.  Some time ago, a friend gave me an orchid.  I had never had an orchid and immediately put it in a pot of dirt.  Fortunately, I was informed that orchids don’t grow in dirt and purchased a bag of chips (redwood?) at a greenhouse and re-potted the plant in a hanging, chip-filled pot.  I was also advised that orchids shouldn’t be in direct sunlight or watered very much.  I translated this to mean “forget about it,” which I did.  Recently, as I was walking under the cas tree, I bumped into a large collection of blossoms – the orchid was blooming!!!  This was perhaps 3 years after hanging it in the tree.  What a wonderful surprise.  If I were seriously trying to grow orchids, they’d die so I will continue to ignore the plant, but will watch it so I don’t miss any future flowers.   (Here’s a home where the owner’s green thumb is very much in evidence.)