Not much to talk about. No pictures

 It's warming up again but it still cools by twenty degrees by nightfall. There's really nothing happening in the garden as you've seen. So no pictures this time, just rambling garden/plant thoughts.

I did see the Bird of Paradise around the complex starting to put flower stalks up. It's that time of year for them, being sub-tropicals this is their bloom time. They have their own beauty of course but I'll trade that for spring time bulbs, rhododendrons and fall leaf color any day.

The trees out my window do change, by that I mean, leaves turn brown and drop off for the winter. The 'California Pepper' never goes naked, just drops various things at different times of  year. There are some Melaleuca trees in the other complex also don't lose their leaves, they just get bushy.

And more plant trivia about that tree. Melaleuca, Eucalyptus and bottlebrush are all in the same family of Myrtles. The flower similarity is there, which is a clue if you have seen them. Brush like on some but distinctive filament type flowers on all of them. Eucalyptus is a big family of trees in more ways than one. I've grown up around them all my life so they've been a part of the California landscape for hundreds of years before that.

Eucalyptus were originally brought to California in the 1850's as seeds. It was a fast growing tree that took little care and thrived in California which had similar weather and temperatures as it's native land of Australia. Well they imported it to use as housing and railroad ties but then discovered due to it's high oil and water content it cracked and split too easily. Made it not only unsuitable but dangerous to use in anything but ornamental. It was also discovered that the Blue Gum, one of the largest Eucalyptus grew an average of 4-6 FEET in a rainy year. But another discovery was that it was a very thirsty tree and drained swamps and lakes they were planted near.

Of course over the decades the oil has been used as a scent and animal deterrent then in medicinal use. It has it's uses and due to how quickly it does grow, there's no shortage of the trees or fear of 'deforestation'.

So yeah, another tree I can do without.

You would think I'm complaining about evergreen trees but it's only certain ones. Could I ever complain or get tired of looking at fir or redwood trees? Probably not. I lived a good chunk of my live in the Bay Area where the Santa Cruz Mountains were home to millions of Coast Redwoods. I loved hiking on some of the trails there, it's a different smell than hiking through oaks and scrub areas. They're old, huge and you can't grow much under them but that's not the point. Dense cool shade and sound absorbing branches is the draw for me. I remember standing on one hiking trail and if not for a plane overhead could not hear anything but birds. That is a forest.

Sadly the last year or two the wildfires hit my favorite park Big Basin and wiped out a good swath of the forest around there. Those trees were decades if not hundreds of years old. They will not recover any time soon. A few years ago up in Oregon and Washington, some of their forests and the Columbia River Gorge was also decimated. All my childhood and later memories are not the same looking as they are now. 

You can never go home because sometimes, home isn't there anymore.