Until coming here, we'd never dreamed that citrus trees, impatiens and orchids grew wild. I mean on some level of thought we must have known this, but to us, these were exotic plants only grown in greenhouses.
Not any more.
When we purchased our lot, we also purchased one full grown grapefruit tree and three lemon trees... and we've been getting a 'citrus education', particularly about lemons, which can be small as a ping-pong ball or large as a five-pound bag of sugar; their taste ranges from sweet (practically tasteless) to bitter (this sort taste good if dipped in a bit of sugar).
We also learned that parakeets fly in noisy flocks, while parrots and falcons seem rather solitary. Despite the fact that the area our lot is in in a prime location for birders, we haven't had much luck taking photos of birds ... butterflies and flowers are calmer, so we'll share these with you:
Not all the flowers are small the ones below are seen on the 'flame of the forest', which is the national tree of Panama and each blossom is the size of a teacup:
AND, until now, perhaps you could say that you'd never seen the flower of a banana tree:
While I wouldn't call a banana blossom beautiful, I would certain call it sculptural...
And, I promised photos of the butterflies which were slow enough to focus on (beleive me there are some really fast species around here):
