Out for a walk in Lima

What a week! I'll get to the school performances, but first here are a few pictures from a walk I took last Sunday.

I walked up Av Arequipa on the bike path in the middle of the avenue. On Sunday mornings, according to this sign, no vehicles are allowed, so there are no exhaust fumes. I was walking on Sunday afternoon, so that wasn't the case.

This beauty on Av. Arequipa is for sale.

It's almost midwinter and the temperatures in Lima are a steady 72 degrees fahrenheit (22.2 celsius) most days. The plants love this! Here's a blast of color I walked past, enhanced by the white wall:

And a closeup:
Does anybody else think of Dr Seuss when looking at this tree? What is it?

I'm struck by the mix of architecture in Lima. Small Spanish colonial style houses are right next to, or smushed between, highrise apartment buildings.

I was looking for a particular park, but had forgotten the map so I had a pleasant time wandering around for a couple of hours, looking at houses and gardens. This part of Lima is fairly quiet. By the time I was ready to go back to my apartment, I was far away, so I took a bus back. I'm getting adept at bus travel in the city.

I'll write about the school performances next. Stay tuned!

Green Sao Paulo

Everybody told me what a big city Sao Paulo is. Everybody told me that it's polluted. Everybody told me it's dangerous.

Nobody told me about the trees and plants. Nobody told me that there are small houses mixed in with tall apartment buildings, and that many of these have lovely gardens. Nobody told me that it's safe in the way other big cities are safe, if you just pay attention and don't do stupid things like walk around late at night alone.

Here's another view from my 9th floor hotel room. Click on it to see it larger so you can see the orange flowers.

I believe this is an ipe tree, though you can't quite tell how stunning the flowers are.  They come in different colors--is that an ipe outside my hotel window as well? And what's that on the trunk? 

Okay, so maybe the streets are dangerous--these cacti are growing in a wall next to the sidewalk!  Ouch!

Late this afternoon we went to a park that overlooks the city, near a green zone. I loved the shape of the branches on this tree in the park.


Here's a view of the green zone and then some of the city. I'd need a panoramic camera to capture how massive Sao Paulo is (19 million is one estimate I've heard). Once again, if you click on it, you'll get a better sense of the size.

One more of the view.

Geranium garden

I know, I know, these are more properly called pelargoniums, but I can't help myself. It's like calling the refrigerator the ice box. It's what I do.

At any rate, last year I took all my geraniums and put them in a little garden. I stopped by the garden center and got a few more varieties. In the winter, I potted them up and brought them inside. They're back in the planters on the back terrace this year.


Yesterday I happened across peppermint-scented geraniums in the "quick sale" area of the grocery store, so I added one to the citrus scented varieties I already have. Everything is jumbled together, but if you look carefully, you'll see different shapes of leaves and colors of flowers.


I've got geraniums with giant leaves, ivy-leaf geraniums, regular garden-variety geraniums, and various colors of flower from deep purply-black to magenta to red to pink to white.


Oh, and this red and yellow leafed beauty (oops, forgot to weed that one!).


Because I'm so busy in the summer, I don't have time to take care of an extensive garden. This set of planters, the houseplants, the beds in front of the house, and the two pots of tomatoes are all I can manage. Most of the time, they get a slosh of water when I remember. I'm lucky they seem not to mind being ignored. What used to be the vegetable garden still has asparagus, lavender, chives, lamb's ear and Egyptian onions (walking onions), but the black-eyed Susans (rudbeckia) and weeds are taking over.