Gardens come in a myriad of varieties. Many of us have our own (although not this son of the concrete). The scene here is the annual orchid show at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. Stop and smell the roses with other City Daily Photo members from around the world at https://citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/ .
Seen at an annual outdoor religious event that draws photographers as well as the devout. I think that's a Canon camera strap. More will be revealed after tomorrow's City Daily Photo theme day.
Kingshighway is a major north-south through street in the City of St. Louis proper. Part of it runs along Forest Park, the largest urban park in the United States. That stretch contains expensive apartment and condo buildings as well as the enormous Washington University Medical Center. The architectural contrasts are stark.
That's how it feels to many of us in St. Louis when we are out in the street, and certainly in much of the rest of the country. The picture is a bit of a tease, though. This locally famous statue in a downtown plaza is in the middle of a fountain whose water is colored for various occasions. Looks like a hot foot, though.
It's not Arizona, but after a moderate first half of summer our southwestern sirocco has blown this way. 102 F is 39 C. This sign is on a bank and I assure you that nobody was walking up. This is America. We drive.
The hottest I remember in my years here is 106 F / 41 C. It sticks in my memory because a few people in my office had hired a teacher from the Alliance Francaise for weekly lessons. Her mother back home saw the reports on the news and called to ask if people were dying in the streets. Of course, that was before the same kind of thing started happening in France.
Virtually all of the sunflowers we saw were very symmetrical - uniform, bright yellow outer petals; a middle ring of golden stalks or hooks; and a inner disk of tiny geometric whorls changing from gold to green. This one flower broke the pattern with the middle ring incomplete and the inner disk collapsing into a void. The bee didn't care.
An immature sunflower just getting ready to pop into bloom. It is fascinating to see how the bright yellow petals begin to form. At this stage, they look like a plant that could suck something in and trap it.
A field of sunflowers at the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area. Not as far as the eye can see but more than the eye can count.
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,Who countest the steps of the Sun:Seeking after that sweet golden climeWhere the travellers journey is done.
- William Blake, 1794
The Columbia Bottom Conservation Area is a preserve in far north St. Louis County along the Missouri River. All summer long the state agency that manages it plants acres of sunflowers in staggered groups so some area is in its glory throughout the season. Mrs. C and I took a drive up to view the spectacle yesterday.
We've been back home for almost a week and I have not been back out on the local streets. It's time to bring it back home, but for today I have to hit the archives. This is the Gateway Geyser. It is in a park in East St. Louis, Illinois, directly across the Mississippi from the Arch. They pop it off four times a day in the warmer months. How high the jet rises depends on the wind. If it's perfectly calm the water rises as high as the top of the Arch.
The condo we rent at Playa Langosta faces roughly west with a view to the Pacific. The qualities of the sunset depend on the weather and cloud patterns. This was a pretty good one.
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Another vendor at the Tamarindo night market. An American ex-pat (there are lots of them) was promoting organic and vegan products. Unusually, they were all chocolates, Costa Rican grown, gently fertilized and lovingly processed. One of the products on offer were heart-shaped chocolate pops on a (wooden, of course) spoon-stick. It came with instructions to stir it into your favorite non-dairy milk substitute. Our granddaughter chose to ignore those instructions and pronounced the result excellent.
Tamarindo has a weekly night market. It's not very big but it is bustling. Lots of crafts, jewelry, art and also several food vendors. This was one of the bigger operations. I'm not sure what they were making but this man seems to be working a very large wok with cauliflower, broccoli and carrots. We didn't sample any because we had dinner plans for Mrs. C's birthday.
I do some B&W work when I think it's appropriate for the scene. These trees grow in sand at the edge of the beach in Playa Langosta. High tide comes very close. How do they get nutrients from salty sand? I'm sure it has been studied but there was no one for me to ask.
Costa Rica sits along the Pan American mountain range that goes from the Andes to the Rockies to Alaska. There are lots of volcanoes, active and not. The effect can be seen on many beaches on the Pacific side, where tan to black lava flows have not yet been reduced to sand. Low tide brings interesting pools, with of critters from very small, like tiny hermit crabs such as the one that unexpectedly showed up in our bedroom (https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10161256324502313&set=a.128314812312) to larger fauna, who don't seem to mind lounging on rocks.
Scouting the Saturday market in Tamarindo, we found a vendor we'd met before. An Argentine family sold authentic empanadas and this unusual international assortment of hot dogs. Porteño is the word that residents of Buenos Aires call themselves, people of the port. The price is in Costa Rican colones, about $4.50 or €4.00. I'd go with the French, myself.
So here we sit at the Miami airport Saturday night with most flights running very late due to weather across the southern U.S. We are now scheduled to arrive in St. Louis at 2:00 AM if there are no further delays. I wish my car had autopilot.
Tamarindo has a weekly outdoor market on Saturday. There is some food but most of the things on offer are crafts, herbal this and that, costume jewelry and clothing. The Ticos who help set up and supply the feria need something to pass the time between tasks. This man was part of a four-person card game just outside the market. No idea what they were playing. I stopped, had a look and found that a little ¿permisso? goes a long way.
At least that's what the scene made me think of, maybe at a temple on an Aegean island. It is actually just out back of an excellent restaurant called Pangas Beach Club. The strip of water in the mid-ground is an estuary between Tamarindo and the next beach over, Playa Grande. People walk across at low tide but there are, uh, crocodiles.
A mostly cloudy sunset at Playa Langosta. Underexposed but not color corrected. Would it be the end of the world if we couldn't come back here?
Noam Kostucki installed a professional kitchen in her home out in the Costa Rican forest. She produced a spectacular seven course dinner without help, although there may be an assistant for a bigger group of diners. This is a magician at work.
Note the mobile phone in the foreground. It is mounted on a small flexible tripod on a pot, taking video of the proceedings.
Located in the woods a half hour out of Tamarindo, Noam Kostucki presides over the culinary experience of a lifetime. Noam is Polish Jewish, grew up in Belgium and has lived in many parts of the world, now in Costa Rica for nine years. Her culinary skills are self-taught and they are extraordinary. The meal is a seven course tasting menu, more about which tomorrow. There are a maximum of twelve guests at a communal table but, in low season, there were only four of us last night. This experience is worth a journey. See https://www.elmundodenoam.com/hirfinedining
By the way, if you go, do not drive yourself. Use one of the car services Noam recommends.
Through all of our busy travels over the last month we have come to our final destination, Playa Langosta, Costa Rica. This is the view from our balcony. We figured out from the guest book that this is out twelfth time in this condo, fourteenth time in Tamarindo/Playa Langosta and nineteenth time in Costa Rica over the decades. I guess we like it a lot. Pura vida.
Greetings from beautiful Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, where we are overnighting on our way to more scenic climes. We are not exactly Texas people although, to be fair, the political and social climate isn't much better than Missouri although the climate is even worse and the scale is way bigger. Flying out this morning to one of our favorite places.
Word salad in Times Square. It's been three whole days since I've been on an airplane and I need to do something about it. Next stop, the tropics. Well, after a flight connection.
Another scene in Times Square. Check out the expression on his face. I have my own reaction and I will leave you to yours.
As if any one person could contain the enormity of New York. The north end of Times Square contains a set of steps to nowhere that are effectively bleachers to view the passing action. I spoke to the wife of the man with the outstretched arms who happened to be standing next to me. They were visiting from Philadelphia and wanted a visual souvenir of the event. There are events beyond counting in this town.
There hasn't been much about St. Louis lately for a blog that bills itself as being about St. Louis. I don't think there will be any soon. By Sunday Mrs. C and I will be in a different country, one that we are very familiar with.
My sister has a big house in the New Jersey suburbs of New York. For years and years, we would all get together at her house over the Fourth of July holiday, and before that at our father's home, who lived in the same town. The tradition was disrupted by Covid and grandchildren but we make the effort to get back this year.
We turned out pretty well. All prosperous. All on our first marriages. Four undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Three out of four bad spines. Seen a lot of the world. From left to right, John, Suzanne, Mary Beth and your humble blogger. I hope we can keep it up.
Home this afternoon and then no more airplanes until Saturday.
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said
This is my own, my native land!
- From a mawkish poem by Sir Walter Scott
But, my, how it's changed since I lived here. All the shiny new buildings, dominated by One World Trade Center toward the left. This is lower Manhattan taken from across the Hudson in New Jersey. There would normally be a spectacular fireworks display on the water tonight for the 4th of July but thunderstorms are likely.
Ah, the little island where I was born. Times Square, of course. As my sibs slowly drifted in to my sister's house in New Jersey, I went to Manhattan for a bit of a walkabout.
Flew over to New York yesterday and then drove to New Jersey, where I'll spend the 4th of July holiday with my sibs and their families. I made sure to get a window seat on the left/north side of the plane. Irregular streaks of soot stained the sky. As I drove across the bridge linking Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx, the air was a smudge of orange-brown, the sun looking like old fruit ready for the trash.
My plane got out of St. Louis just as lightening was flashing across the west. Shortly thereafter, a huge storm blew in, causing flash flooding and downed power lines. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
