Spring flowers all year round

Esther, the mom in the family I live with/rent from is a pretty awesome lady. For many reasons, many of which I'll hopefully go into later. She's one of the calmest people I have met in Costa Rica, and honestly, in my life. Calm isn't usually the first word that comes to mind when describing a person, but it does for her. As opposed to many other middle aged Tican women I've met, she's just very relaxed, very at ease with the world. It's not that she doesn't work hard-she does, it's just that I've seldom seen her get excited about anything and added to her super soft, slow, peaceful voice and way of speaking, she's very pleasant to be around. 

And, here's the transition, so are her flowers. It's no secret that, being in the tropics, it rains a lot here, there's lots of strong sun, and thus-anything grows here, anytime. Well, Esther has done great things with this environment. She has planted and maintains a huge number of flowers alongside the fence lines of the yard, as well as in a few other corners of the yard. Every few weeks she'll grab a chef's knife, and head out to cut off some of the blooming flowers to use in vases around the house as well as trim back some of the extra growth. A little bit of Internet told me that most of the flowers are heliconias, and I haven't a clue about the rest. If you ever visit, you can thank her for the visually pleasing blog entry. (Yes, I'm aware it's been lots of text recently-hence this post).