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.)

A death knell for the ubiquitous fly?

During a drive in the country yesterday afternoon, my companion stopped the car and we got out so he could point out a plant he called “matamosca.”  The plant was growing along a fence and looked just like any other leafy vine until you got up close and could spy the flowers (poor choice of words if you think of flowers as being attractive and having a nice smell).  The “business” part of the plant – its flower – was well camouflaged among the leaves.  Lurking.  Waiting.  The flower resembled a large, open shell.  When a foolhardy unsuspecting fly enters the cavity of the shell, the flower closes and the fly is consumed by the plant.  No messy swatter or wild chase to relieve the earth of one more despicable bacteria-laden winged insect!  As we drove away, I wondered why restaurants, open markets, home owners, you name it, don’t have these vines twining around doorways, windows, over fences, and anywhere the vines can grow!  (No flies will bother you in this house!)

From sticks to a flowering fence

Walking in San Isidro de Heredia one day, my companion and I were accosted by a broken branch hanging down over the sidewalk. We broke it off so no one else would be attacked by it and kept the branch, intending to throw it somewhere. However, when we looked up, we noticed enormous yellow flowers covering the mother plant we had just pruned so judiciously. Since the landscaping at my home at the time consisted of a little grass and a lot of weeds, I decided to take the branch home to plant – just in case something would happen. I stripped off the leaves and cut a couple pieces about 12 inches long and stuck them in the ground in the corner of the yard near the fence. Before long, little leaves started appearing on the bare sticks. The sticks grew and branches started growing with more leaves. Today, the plant covers about 35 feet of fence horizontally and over 5 feet vertically – it reaches for the sky and the wires overhead. Its growth has been limited only by the neighbor’s discreet pruning (guess she’s not a plant lover) or by people walking by breaking off branches for their own gardens. Children are attracted to the enormous flowers and often pick them while walking by on their way home from school. I have no idea what the plant’s name is, but it has been a delight for birds, children, passersby and me!  (Lush gardens abound at this home.)