![]() ![]() In this coolness, this release of the last sunlight in the west and the stunning blue in the east, people tell me stories. I am sweeping blossoms from the asphalt, and yet they're raining down on my head, as the hummingbirds screech and flash iridescent green. He moved away a short time later.)īut now my brother is gone, having passed away in 2002, and his tree is maybe fifty feet tall, covered this fall with more luscious pink flowers than ever, so many that the hummingbirds fight even at twilight on the branches above my head. (It's true that one morning years ago, a neighbor no one liked was drinking a beer - yes, at 11 am - and riding a kid-sized bike with long handlebars when he gave me an evil glare and then crashed straight into the tree trunk. "It's your security tree," he said proudly, because of the masses of terrible sharp thorns all along the trunk it would eventually grow. We planted it in the parking strip in front of my house. Seventeen years ago, on a night like this, he brought me a pink floss-silk tree seedling, one he'd started from the actual small seed like a peppercorn inside the cottony fluff. My brother Jeff used to stop by around this time to help me weed or tell me his latest legend. I've spent twenty years trimming sunflowers and roses hanging over the white fence my neighbor Mike built, greeting every evening other neighbors who come out to walk at dusk, as well as strangers or new people who stop to tell me stories. Many of us wait until the sky turns the color of new jeans, a beautiful darker blue, and the sidewalk finally cools off. But three colors are everywhere right now - the dark gold of dry vegetation, the crimson splash of bougainvillea spilling from hillsides and walls, and the vivid pink floss-silk tree blooming everywhere.Īutumn brings some legendary hot days, and yet the early evening air turns the color of honey - not white like summer - and because the garden is ragged, I turn to night gardening. Fall doesn't really fall in southern California until long after the traditional September date on the calendar.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |