If you've ever driven through a Southern California neighborhood in late May to early June, and looked up at the sky through a canopy of purple jacaranda trees, you'd swear that Harold had been there with his purple crayon!
Since the blooms last for a total of about six weeks, some wilted purple blossoms were already starting to fall to the ground. And now that it's mid-June, I can picture the streets covered in a carpet of purple!
In return, she would plant 100 trees per year throughout the park and donate others to the city for planting elsewhere. She brought jacarandas to Southern California in the early part of the 20th Century.
Reading about Katherine Sessions, I couldn't help but think of Crockett Johnson's "Harold". Katherine wanted a garden for her city, so she planted it. Harold, a curious four-year-old boy with a purple crayon, created an imaginative world of his own by simply drawing it.
Lovely photos! Lovely post.
ReplyDeleteHow lovely. A friend visited from Australia recently, she told us about the Jacaranda trees in her garden.
ReplyDeleteValerie - that made me curious! I looked up its origins: Jacaranda is a genus of 49 species of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae, native Brazil and Argentina. It has been planted widely in Asia, especially in Nepal. It is found throughout the Americas and Caribbean, and has been introduced to Australia, New Zealand, India, Fiji, Portugal, Spain and parts of Africa.
DeleteI guess they like the heat! :)