|
A.M.
Costa Rica
Your daily English-language news source Monday through Friday |
 |
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|
Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for more details |
|
||
|
San
José, Costa Rica, Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 191
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|
 Municipalidad de
Desamparados
photo
One of the artists creates a face.Sculptors
brighten up Desamparados parks
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Municipalidad de Desamparados has identified two sections of the canton that are rich in natural resources suitable for the work of sculptors. One is San Juan de Dios where the I Encuentro de Escultores is being held through the middle of this week. Sculptors are creating works from the local granite and other rock materials found there. The public is invited to visit the Parque Central where the work is taking place, said the municipality. Thursday the work will be transferred to Patarrá for 15 days more. The project is a joint one with the Asociación Nacional de Escultores, and the works that are created will remain in place for the benefit of the public, said the municipality.  Stanford University/Barbara
Block
Marine
sciences Professor Barbara Block and Charles Farwell ofthe Monterey Bay Aquarium tag a Pacific bluefin tuna. Tags tell the
tail on tuna eating habits
By the Stanford University news staff
After chowing down a big meal, a person might feel the belly warm as the stomach muscles and digestive organs set to work breaking the food into smaller and smaller pieces rich in nutrients. A bluefin tuna's stomach experiences a similar spike in temperature when it gulps down a mouthful of juicy sardines. Now, scientists at Stanford University, Monterey Bay Aquarium and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have devised a way to measure that internal temperature increase in the fish. This is the first work to measure how much energy an aquatic animal consumes in the wild. The technique has allowed the researchers to identify the bluefin's favorite dining spots along the North American coastline. The findings are published online in Science Advances, and could help design better conservation policies to help a species in steep decline. Pacific bluefin tuna are a superbly streamlined, bullet-shaped fish, with powerful swimming muscles capable of powering transoceanic travels. Unlike most other bony fish, they are warm bodied, elevating their internal tissue temperatures above that of the surrounding water. "Bluefin tuna are the pinnacle of bony fish evolution, endothermic or warm-bodied in a manner that rivals the metabolic performances of birds and mammals," said senior author Barbara Block, a professor of marine sciences at Stanford. Bluefin tuna remain warm by capturing the metabolic heat produced as their swimming muscles contract with every tailbeat. This is made possible via specialized net-like blood vessels, called counter-current heat exchangers, in their muscles and digestive organs that prevent heat loss through their gills. Maintaining warmer-than-water body temperatures allows the fish to swim more efficiently and spend less energy digesting food and enables them to thrive in a wide range of ecological niches. The researchers homed in on this thermal characteristic in order to measure energy intake and from that surmise the animals' daily foraging habits. The researchers implanted small data-logging tags in more than 500 tunas off the coast of Southern California and Mexico, and recorded the fishes' body temperature and ambient water temperature, as well as their locations and diving patterns as they searched for prey. With the help of fishing crews, the researchers recovered more than one-third of the tags, containing data records as long as three years as the fish made seasonal migrations from the waters off Mexico to Oregon. Previously, observations led by Rebecca Whitlock, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford, made at the Tuna Research and Conservation Center, had created a model for translating the change in tuna heat signatures into their caloric intake. Inside the center, which is operated by Stanford and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, researchers could count single sardines or squid consumed by individual tunas and match the warming signal to the energetic value of the prey item digested. The thermal data showed exactly when the tunas ate a meal, and the researchers estimated how much energy a free swimming bluefin receives per unit of time, as well as how temperature changes impact that energy intake. "We've been able to follow what Pacific bluefin tuna do in the open sea and record their feeding and meal size, every day for up to three years," said Ms. Whitlock, the lead author of the new paper. "Combining laboratory observations with electronic tagging can provide amazingly rich data and insights into the life of a wild marine predator." The wild tunas consumed prey on 90 percent of the days observed during the study, and the empirical data analyses and energetic model output allowed the scientists to chart precisely how much the fish ate, typically sardines and squid, and the total energy they consumed as they journeyed through the ocean. From this, the scientists mapped the position data from the tags to satellite observations of sea temperature, chlorophyll levels and ocean currents, all factors that can combine to create nutrient-rich feeding grounds. These coincided well with successful tuna feedings, though interestingly the fish didn't always camp out in the locations with the best conditions to take advantage of the buffet. "Foraging success was correlated to environmental features," said co-author Elliott Hazen, a research ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Tuna may use the oceanography as a roadmap to move from hotspot to hotspot, and temperature appears to be the most important environmental cue." Whenever the bluefin digests a meal, the fish tends to stay in waters that allowed it to remain at an optimum temperature to promote rapid digestion of the meal. Too high or too low an environmental temperature, and the increased demands of digestion can strain the cardiovascular system. The new work identified feeding hotspots for Pacific bluefin tuna along the Baja Peninsula in June and July, off Northern California from October to November and near central California in January and February. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this Web site are
copyrighted by Consultantes Ro Colorado S.A 2015 and may not be
reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
|
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 191 | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| Another batch of pre-Columbian objects confiscated by police
at airport |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The message to tourists is clear: When buying a modern replica of an archaeological piece, a receipt is mandatory. The Policía Aeroportuaria found a U.S. tourist who was bound for Atlanta carrying five objects that seemed to be authentic works of pre-Columbian residents. The pieces were confiscated Saturday, and, in fact, they seem to be far from museum quality. Yet, Costa Rica guards its ancient past aggressively. The Ministerio de Seguridad Pública said this was the second case of officers finding a presumed archaeological piece in two weeks. The other case was at the Peñas Blancas border crossing, the ministry said. That person has a human figure in stone, the ministry added. Airport police said they contacted the Museo Nacional after finding the five pieces at Juan Santamaría. airport. Generally archaeological artifacts are more valuable if they are located in place and that location is documented. What police confiscated was a well worn human figure and four stones that may have been used to create the figure. |
 Ministerio de
Seguridad Pública photo
These are the items confiscated
at the airport.Costa Rica has artists that can create replicas that might fool even the experts. So those who purchase them should expect to be questioned at the airport. In Guaitil, Guanacaste, residents are making pottery with the same techniques, the same clay and the same forms that their ancestors made to the Aztecs and Maya. These are highly sought as souvenirs, but airport police are not likely to know the difference unless the traveler has receipts. |
| There was more than chocolate syrup with that ice cream |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The recipe won't be found in the "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook," but someone in El Tejar de El Guarco, Cartago, is fooling around with hashish ice cream. A 14-year-old went to Hospital Max Peralta en Cartago Friday with symptoms consistent with ingestion of marijuana. |
The
Ministerio de Seguridad Pública said that the child ate ice
cream
laced with the drug. Investigators said that the high school girl got the ice cream from a friend at school. The girl tested positive for marijuana at the hospital, investigators said. The amount of marijuana in the ice cream must have been significant to cause the intoxication. |
| Police find another case where gunpowder and alcohol do not
mix |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Early Sunday was not even New Year's but men in two cars in Desamparados were reported to have been driving around firing off guns. Police at first thought they were dealing with a shootout, but they stopped one vehicle in San Antonio de Desamparados and found two men. The driver was more or less off the charts on the alcohol test. In the vehicle were a shotgun and cartridges. The second man in the vehicle turned out to be the owner of a security company. He, too, reeked of alcohol, said police. |
The shootings
had taken place in Guatuso, Patarra de Desamparados. As Fuerza Pública officers were questioning the two men, a friend drove up in the second car. He was seeking his companions because they stopped following him, said police. This man was reported to be an employee of a state bank and the owner of the shotgun. Police confiscated all the weapons based on a directive to relieve those under the influence of their firearms even if they have the legal right to carry them. All of the individuals in the vehicles had proper paperwork, said police. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this Web site are
copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2015 and may not
be
reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
 |
|
||||
| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 191 | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| Sex games with yeasts result in some really good beers,
researchers say |
|
|
By the American Society for Microbiology
news staff
Unlike ales, lager beers differ little in flavor. But now, by creating new crosses among the relevant yeasts have opened up new horizons of taste. The research is published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The relative uniformity of flavor among lagers turned out to result in significant part from a lack of genetic diversity among the yeasts. Genetic studies showed that lager yeasts had resulted from just two crosses between the parent yeasts, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. eubayanus. The problem was that the two yeast species are so different, like lions and tigers, as to make successful crosses rare. “We figured that if we could create more crosses between S. cerevisiae and S. eubayanus, we would perhaps produce a set of more diverse lager yeasts, which could yield more diverse lager beers,” said Kevin Verstrepen, who is professor in genetics and genomics, University of Leuven. The researchers did their best to optimize growing conditions, hoping to encourage mating between the yeasts. To this end, they experimented with different temperatures and growing media. “We were able to get some serious sexual action between our yeasts, which resulted in hundreds of new lager yeast strains,” said Verstrepen. But of 31 new strains that they tested in small scale beer fermentations, only 10 performed reasonably well in terms of speed of fermentation, and flavor. “Some were |
really bad,”
Verstrepen confessed. They then tested the four best of these in full-scale fermentations. “Two were magnificent,” said Verstrepen. “They fermented more quickly than the commercially used reference lager yeast that we compared them to, and they produced really nice flavors.” More generally, “We found that the different lager yeasts that we created showed very different aroma profiles compared to today’s commercially available lager yeasts,” said Stijn Mertens, who was the paper’s lead author. “This means that it now becomes possible to make lager beers that, like ale beers, are more different from each other, and this without the need to extensively change the production process.” Lager beers are fermented with S. pastorianus, which is a hybrid between S. cerevisiae and S. eubayanus, at temperatures generally between 8 to 15 degrees C. They also have a lower alcohol content, 4 to 5.5 percent by volume. Ales are fermented by S. cerevisiae, at higher temperatures, usually between 15 to 25 degrees C., and they tend to be stronger than lagers. The research originated during one of the regular Friday evening beer tastings at the laboratory, in which students would taste and discuss five or six related beers. “One night, we tasted six Pilsner-type beers, and someone commented on how similar they were, much more so than beers of other types,” said Verstrepen. |
Here's reasonable medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents of this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado
S.A. 2015 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
|
A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
 |
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 191 | |||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| Pope says Mass for thousands in his Philadelphia farewell By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Pope Francis celebrated a late-afternoon Sunday Mass before hundreds of thousands in Philadelphia, capping off a frenetic, six-day visit to the United States that mesmerized Americans and energized his followers. As crowds filled the sprawling, leafy Benjamin Franklin Parkway in central Philadelphia, the pope said their mere coming together for the ritual was "a kind of miracle in today’s world." "And how beautiful it would be if everywhere, even beyond our borders, we could appreciate and encourage this prophecy and this miracle!" the Argentine native said in his homily, speaking in Spanish. Wearing the green vestment of the liturgical season, Francis sat on a custom-built stage. With the Philadelphia Art Museum behind him, Francis could see over the nearly 1.6 kilometer-long river of humanity to the statue of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, atop City Hall. The official reason for his visit was to attend the World Meeting of Families, held in the United States for the first time. And in his homily, Francis spoke about family life, saying faith is lived out in the details. "They are little signs of tenderness, affection and compassion. Like the warm supper we look forward to at night, the early lunch awaiting someone who gets up early to go to work,” he said. "Faith grows when it is lived and shaped by love. That is why our families, our homes, are true domestic churches." On arrival, the pope’s heavily guarded motorcade looped around the parkway, which Philadelphians like to compare to Paris' Champs-Elysees. He took his time, kissing babies and waving to the adoring throngs. The pope also exhorted followers to bridge differences. "May our children find in us models of communion, not division," he said. Francis' focus on children linked to his declaration that morning that the Roman Catholic Church would work zealously to prevent and atone for priests’ sexual abuse of youngsters and for superiors’ efforts to conceal grave misdeeds. "I remain overwhelmed with shame that men entrusted with the tender care of children violated these little ones and caused grievous harm," said Francis, who'd met early Sunday morning with three women and two men who'd been victimized as youths. "I am profoundly sorry. God weeps." Francis made those remarks to at least 300 bishops, gathered for a morning meeting at a chapel of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. After the Sunday Mass, the pope was to board a flight back to Rome. The Mass caps an intense week in Washington, New York and Philadelphia in which the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics has demonstrated his devotion to the poor and his determination to engage the powerful in helping them. In Washington, Francis met with President Barack Obama and addressed the U.S. Congress, also visiting a homeless shelter. In New York, he addressed world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly and encouraged youngsters, including many immigrants, at an elementary school in East Harlem. In Philadelphia, the pope made the church's most profound apology yet on the scandalous sexual abuse of children by clergy. According to The Associated Press, the pope is creating a new Vatican tribunal to prosecute bishops who covered up for pedophile priests instead of reporting them to law enforcement. Victims rights groups have complained that the Catholic Church and its leaders have done too little to address the clergy abuse, which has made headlines in the United States since 2002. Up to 100,000 U.S. children may have been victimized, Reuters reported, citing a paper by insurance experts that was presented at a Vatican conference in 2012. Philadelphia, once a bastion of the U.S. Catholic church, especially has been rocked by the clergy sexual abuse scandal, with three grand jury investigations focused on its archdiocese. The last one, in 2011, accused it of leaving more than three dozen priests accused of serious crimes in assignments that might jeopardize others. Mrs. Clinton blames GOP for continuing email saga By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says she has done all she can to be transparent over her revelations about use of a private email server while she served as secretary of State. "It is like a drip, drip, drip. That's why I said there is only so much I can control," Mrs. Clinton told NBC's "Meet the Press." "I can't predict to you what the Republicans will come up with, what kind of, you know, charges or claims they might make." Mrs. Clinton compared the criticism of her use of private email, instead of a government account, to a land deal controversy that marred the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton. "During the `90s, I was subjected to the same kind of barrage. And it was, it seemed to be at the time, endless,'' she said. During the interview, Mrs. Clinton again called her use of a private server a mistake. Last week, a newly discovered email correspondence between Mrs. Clinton and retired Gen. David Petraeus raised questions as to whether she had turned over to the government her full record of work-related email. Boehner predicts Congress will keep government open By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Two days after announcing his resignation, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner predicted Congress would meet Wednesday’s deadline to extend U.S. government funding and avoid a partial shutdown. “I suspect my Democratic colleagues want to keep the government open as much as I do,” said Boehner, a Republican, on the CBS television program "Face the Nation." His planned departure next month has heightened disarray in Congress as yet another fiscal deadline looms. A narrow path exists to avoid a shutdown, but one that will require Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress to act in concert and with rare discipline as time runs short. Boehner acknowledged the challenges he has faced leading a Republican caucus eager to battle Democrats in general and President Barack Obama in particular. He suggested some of his colleagues’ zeal has blinded them to the realities of what can be accomplished in a politically-divided government. “We’ve got … members of the House and Senate here in town who whip people into a frenzy believing that they can accomplish things that they know — they know! — are never going to happen,” Boehner said on CBS. Last week, Senate Democrats blocked a spending bill that would have defunded a controversial provider of abortions in the United States, a goal shared by nearly all Republicans. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged defeat, and then introduced a stopgap measure extending all current government funding into December. “I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the legislation I am about to file, which would ensure the government remains open,” McConnell said. A series of Senate votes on the bill begins later Monday. Should it reach President Barack Obama’s desk by Wednesday, the shutdown will be averted. But hurdles remain in both legislative chambers. Action could be slowed by hardline Republicans determined to continue the fight over funding for Planned Parenthood, whose officials were secretly videotaped earlier this year discussing the sale of organs from aborted fetuses. Sen. Ted Cruz, who is running for president, says Republicans need to keep promises they make to the voters who elected them. “People are fed up with politicians who say one thing and do another,” Cruz said. Once a rarity, threatened and actual government shutdowns have become common in Washington as one fiscal year ends and another begins. “The calendar that Congress and the president use to appropriate funds is the same every year. These aren’t new deadlines,” said Molly Reynolds, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. Mrs. Reynolds says Congress is more politically-polarized than ever, prompting fierce showdowns over spending. “Any way that the parties can elevate their differences in front of voters on the national stage has become increasingly attractive as they have grown further apart,” she added. A final Senate vote on a spending bill might not happen until Wednesday, giving Speaker Boehner just hours to shepherd the measure through a House chamber beset with divisions and rancor. Cameroon faces resistance with its polio campaign By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Cameroon is ending a polio vaccination campaign against a backdrop of growing resistance, even though officials say 7 percent of Cameroon's children are still at risk of contracting the crippling disease. Clarisse Tomta, 43, has refused to allow vaccination agents to inoculate two of her children, both under 5 years of age. She described the anti-polio campaign as unnecessary. Ms. Tomta said it was becoming suspicious when Cameroon organized so many vaccination campaigns against polio knowing fully well that many mothers were educated enough and master their vaccination calendars. She said many more Cameroonians died of poverty and should be given more consideration. Dr. Noulna Desire of Cameroon's expanded vaccination program said despite the resistance, which he said was a result of misinformation, fear and suspicion, they would not stop until they vaccinated the 5 million children age 5 and younger they were targeting. Desire said in spite of the multitude of inoculation campaigns they have organized, more than 7 percent of Cameroonian children were not vaccinated, more than the 5 percent limit the World Health Organization recommends. He said all children who have not been vaccinated are at risk for contracting polio. In 2014, World Health listed Cameroon among the 10 countries with active wild polio virus, and ranked it among the top four countries posing the greatest threat of exporting the crippling virus to other countries. In March Cameroon attained the status of a non-polio exporting country after it hit the six-month mark without a new case. But World Health said the central African state is still considered a high-risk nation with pockets of resistance.  Metropolitan Opera/ Ken Howard
Otello (Aleksandrs
Antonenko) has just returned from battle and he and Desdemona (Sonya
Yoncheva) sing about their love for each other. Otello is
not in blackface
at the Metropolitan Opera By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Verdi's opera "Otello" is based on Shakespeare’s play about a North African general who becomes a war hero and tries to fit into white society in Venice. It is renowned for its challenging vocals. For over a century, finding anyone to sing the lead part has been difficult. Finding a black singer to portray the Jealous Moor of Venice was next to impossible. "I do not know of a black singer singing Verdi’s 'Otello' in a major opera house ever," said a University of Michigan professor, Naomi André, co-editor of the book Blackness in Opera. However, Ms. André said, "I really believe we should have that opera performed and, hence, we’re going to need to make a decision about how do we handle the Moor, the black element of that role." Black actor Paul Robeson is known for his performances as Otello, including one with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He also was famous as a singer, but he was a bass-baritone. When "Otello" premiered at La Scala in Milan in 1887, the great Italian tenor Francesco Tamagno sang the role in blackface. And ever since, tenors, including Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, have been darkening their skin to play the part. But even opera must change with the times. So for the first time ever, when the Metropolitan Opera's new production of "Otello" opened this month in New York, the white singer performing the title role was not wearing makeup to darken his complexion. Production director Bartlett Sher never even considered having his Otello wear blackface. "Our cultural history in America is profoundly marked by our struggles with race and the questions of race," he said. "And it seems to me, as an artist growing up in America, that there’d be no way on Earth I could possibly figure out how to do it with that kind of makeup, and that it just seemed like an obvious choice." Otello is one of the toughest tenor roles in the world, according to Peter Gelb, Metropolitan Opera general manager. "There are only one or two singers in the world today who can even sing it on the large stage of the Met successfully," he said, "and we cast the best one available." Sher’s production stars Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko. Gelb pointed out that the Met, like many other opera companies, has had a colorblind casting policy for over half a century. Some of the greatest black artists of all time, from Marian Anderson to Leontyne Price to Jessye Norman to Kathleen Battle, have graced its stage. The list of black sopranos and contraltos singing major opera roles is longer than the list of black tenors, baritones and bassos, and Professor André said there’s a reason for that. "Seeing a black male singer onstage with a white female heroine, there would be anxiety that a lot of people could feel in days of segregation, even in post-segregation times, where racial tensions are still very much around," she said. "So I think that was an additional barrier that black men faced — getting on the opera stage." Also, the classic European art form, which began in Italy at the end of the 16th century, has not offered many black role models until recently. "A lot of times," André said, "with African-American or black singers, there’s a feeling of, 'Well, I don’t see a lot of people looking like me onstage.' So negative things are reinforced, instead of encouraging people to go." But times are changing. André pointed to African-American opera stars like bass-baritone Eric Owens and tenor Lawrence Brownlee. And other countries, like South Africa, which has a special program to develop opera singers, are contributing to the trend. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents of this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2015 and may not be reproduced anywhere without
permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
|
||||||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 191 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
||
|
When the sun is
hot, go to the understory
I really have it made on the got lucky scale. First, I live in Costa Rica, an amazing country, and second, we bought a piece of property that has
close together. Real shade is moist underfoot and fragrant. It is dark and cool and comfortable. (It is also slippery, but that's another story.) If you are fortunate to have such a place on your property, you can easily transform it into the perfect shade garden, a refuge when you want to continue to play in the dirt, but it's just too hot in the sun. Too hot in the sun happens a lot, even in the rainy season. That's when I head to the shade garden. If you want to be precise about it, I am gardening in the understory. Natural understory is that part of the rain forest beneath the canopy made by the tallest trees. It is an area where seedlings of those great trees struggle upward toward the light, but it is also a place for ferns, philodendron, mosses, and tabacón and some of the best habitat for orchids and bromeliads. I have all of them in the shade garden. Where did they come from? The ferns were easiest. They grow wild just about everywhere and spread easily when transplanted to an appropriate spot. Bromeliads are second on the easy scale because they seem to be on every tree and fallen branch (be careful of ants and things that live in the plant – I say that from painful experience, and I was wearing gloves). Orchids are the most difficult because they can't be taken from living trees but you can buy them from local producers and fix them to your trees. Or you can be really vigilant and find them on downed trees or even broken limbs. I say vigilant because the usual wild orchid has a very small bloom and you often have to recognize them from the leaf. My best hint? An orchid leaf has a central vein and the other veins are all parallel to it. Other plants have similar leaves, so don't use that as an exclusive in deciding if a plant is an orchid. Is there more to the understory garden? Of course! Check here next week.  A.M. Costa Rica/Victoria
Torley
Plant of the Week
One of my understory orchids rewarded me with this flower just in time for the column. If you look closely, you will see those parallel veins I mentioned. Do I know its name? Sorry – with 30,000 or more wild orchids out there, it would take an expert. If you would like to suggest a topic for this column, simply send a letter to the editor. And, for more garden tips, visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arenal-Gardeners/413220712106845 |
| Costa Rican News |
AMCostaRicaArchives.com |
Retire NOW
in Costa Rica |
CostaRicaReport.com |
| Fine Dining
in Costa Rica |
The CAFTA Report |
Fish
fabulous Costa Rica |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents of this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2015 and may not be reproduced anywhere without
permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
| From Page 7: Holiday shopping already is in high gear By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
with wire service reports A new survey of U.S. consumers reports that roughly 4.6 million shoppers or about 2 percent of the consumer population have already completed their Christmas shopping. That should be a wake-up call to Costa Rican tourism operators who are not yet approaching the coming high season aggressively. The survey report comes from Creditcards.com, an online resource for credit card consumers, according to A.M. Costa Rica's wire services. Since U.S. Labor Day, Sept. 7, the survey shows that 32 million Americans have already started checking items off their Christmas shopping lists, the wire services said. For some U.S. retailers, the last two months of the holiday season can account for as much as 20 to 40 percent of their overall profits for the year. For Costa Rican tourism operations, the high season, from December to March, not only brings more guests but also those with more money. To some extent, tourism operators here are in competition with Christmas retailers elsewhere. And recently retailers have devised some techniques to get the money that could be spent on vacations. The Thanksgiving Day holiday, celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday of November, used to mark the unofficial start to the holiday shopping season. But the last recession prompted many retailers to find new ways to attract shoppers. The first full shopping day after Thanksgiving is often called Black Friday because it marks the day retailers finally shift into profit mode or go into the black. More recently, retailers have found new ways to beat the competition and improve their profit margins with Gray Thursday. The term became popular last year when large retail chains started opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day. For those wanting to avoid the long lines and the crush of people associated with Gray Thursday and Black Friday specials, the first day after the Thanksgiving weekend has its own moniker: Cyber Monday. Retailers say the first full working day after the Thanksgiving holiday is now one of the busiest online shopping days. Black Friday also is popular among Costa Rican retailers. According to the survey, one in four of all adult shoppers expect to finish their holiday shopping by the end of November. Of those, parents and grandparents are twice as likely as those without children to complete their holiday shopping by Dec. 1. Those who earn less are more likely to complete their holiday shopping before Dec. 1. Nearly one third of respondents earning $30,000 or less will finish their holiday shopping by then. The figure drops to one in five for those earning $75,000 or more. |
