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Love/Hate Relationship With the Wind and Bougainvillea Flowers

Baby Boomer Going Like Sixty Posted on by

Bougainvillea flowers in pool skimmer

Not too many love/hate relationships in my life anymore. But I’m pretty passive-aggressive when it comes to Bougainvillea flower petals and the wind.

Jeez they are beautiful! but dammit, not in the pool.

Wind – not breeze. Just to clarify. Breezes good. Wind bad.

Bougainvillea flowers in the wind in the pool. Very bad.

BTW: could you spell bougainvillea without looking?  Boo-gain-vee-ya?  Who says spelling is important?

Research has found that not only do readers notice mistakes, they engage lesswith websites that have language errors, and they are far less likely to buy something from a website that has even a single misspelling. (Spelling isn’t grammar, but it falls under the broad “rules of language” definition of grammar that many people use.)

Back to the rant: When it’s hot in Costa Rica, it’s very hot. And humid. But living in the mountains means there usually is a nice breeze blowing to keep the sweat evaporated and a body cooler.
But the “December Winds” are still with us. One of the myths of living in Costa Rica. The December Winds last longer than you might guess.
The Bougainvillea flowers – while they are on the tree – are strikingly beautiful. But once they leave the branches to seek refuge in the pool and eventually are swept into the skimmer, what a pain the the buetox.

The flowers have one advantage over leaves. The flowers float.

Cat suggested that we needed to add some scented oils and adult beverages under the moonlight to complete the scene.

Hee. Yeah. Right.

Three or four times a day I use the mesh basket on a pole to fish the flowers from the pool. But that doesn’t begin to stop the pounds – yes POUNDS – of Bougainvillea flower petals from getting caught in the skimmer.

Beautiful.

But Yuck.

Why not just let blow around the pool? Because the skimmer leads to the filter which keeps the pool semi-clear. Once the flowers clog the skimmer the flow is restricted.

No baby boomer guy needs a restricted flow.

What a pain. Anybody have any solutions that don’t involve a Bougainvillea tree meeting a chainsaw?

 

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Comments

Love/Hate Relationship With the Wind and Bougainvillea Flowers — 3 Comments

  1. They’re bracts, Mark, not flower petals. Remember dogwood “flowers” from your old habitat? Same thing. And we have them in Phoenix (bougainvillea, not dogwood) and they crud up the pool like you wouldn’t believe. They are outdone, owever, by the palo verde when they happen to be blooming. In the desert things bloom like crazy because the climate is so harsh that few seeds actually survive, so every spring we end up with an inch-thick covering of palo verde flowers everywhere, including in the pool. Be glad if you don’t have them as well as bougainvillea. But they ARE beautiful!

  2. They’re bracts, Mark, not flower petals. Remember dogwood “flowers” from your old habitat? Same thing. And we have them in Phoenix (bougainvillea, not dogwood) and they crud up the pool like you wouldn’t believe. They are outdone, however, by the palo verde when they happen to be blooming. In the desert things bloom like crazy because the climate is so harsh that few seeds actually survive, so every spring we end up with an inch-thick covering of palo verde flowers everywhere, including in the pool. Be glad if you don’t have them as well as bougainvillea. But they ARE beautiful!

    • Wow. Cool. My blog actually taught me something. Never heard of bracts.
      I like knowing smart people. Especially the few that read my blog.
      See you soon.

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