Purple Days

Since late April neighborhood streets have been festooned with jacaranda blossoms, purple as prose but on them it looks good. One might say they form a flamboyant canopy of lavender ribbon…..but I would never say such a thing. And if I just did it’s because the power of the understatement is inappropriate. If flowers could sing, and they do, jacarandas are opera; the divas of spring.

Wildflowers come and go according to their mood and a sufficiency of rain but jacarandas tolerate droughts well, dry throat and all, as they must here in this rescued desert. From where do they get their deep dazzle? Even if I knew I wouldn’t say. Some questions are best unanswered.

To give jacarandas their due the j is pronounced with an h sound or better yet a ch as in chale.

Their leaf is lacy, almost fern-like on branches which elbow their way to mother sun. The blossom occurs in what are called panicles, giving new meaning to panic in the streets. Too bad for us their season is short here in Los Angeles. They disappear from exhaustion after five or six weeks.

And we are bereft. But even when the branches are undressed their petals drop a carpet below which looks inviting to everyone but the homeowner who has to sweep away the sticky flower.

It seems to me this purple jacaranda rain used to fall in late June but the warmest April on record is provoking the tree to bloom earlier. If you can’t get enough of this wonderful stuff you can chase them around the world and purple yourself year-long. There are worse ways to die.

What started in Argentina worked its way north through Central and North America and then circled the globe. There are festivals in Australia and Pretoria, South Africa, is named, Jacaranda City.  A friend once told me that China banned jacarandas after some important person had slipped on their fallen petals. I can find nothing to verify this and chalk it up to mischief-makers on a slippery slope. I shall defend the honor of jacaranda with my last purple breath. Anyway, it couldn’t happen here. We have no important people.

Counter-Intuitive

I can handle having an e-mail ignored but it's tough when your neighborhood hummingbirds reject your feeder. I was scrubbing it and replacing the sugar water when a friend remarked that all my attention to the tiny birds was counter-intuitive.

He explained that my red plastic flower look-alike was destorying the birds natural survival instincts. I was stopped in my tracks. One more time I did it all wrong.

As an urban creature I have long been two with Nature. I can't even recall being attached to stuffed animals. My idea of camping is to go to a motel and sleep with the windows open. I couldn't tell dog poop from bear droppings. But I digress.

The subject is counter-intuition. By "intuition" I mean common sense or a hunch; an opinion based on scraps of information often indistinguishable from a wish. The "counter" must therefore mean that which contradicts the gut feeling which itself could be oppositional to received wisdom. Already I'm getting a brain ache.

Thus with 4th down and inches the quarterback goes for the bomb. Ah ha,the element of surprise. The manager pulls his clean-up hitter and sends in the guy at the end of the bench to pinch hit. Maybe it's nothing more than the triumph of the unexpected; going by the seat of your pants rather than by statisical analysis.

In the case of the beloved hummingbird who works so hard just to stay still isn't my friend simply weighing in with new information? And all for the ultimate well-being of the fluttering wings. So why call it "counter" anything?

Maybe the counter-intuitive is yet another phrase to describe the innovator, one who sees around the corner; who picks up whiffs of tomorrow's news. The Swiss who had 80%of the watch market at one time lost it to the Japanese who took the transitor and ran with it. Five years ago we would have called that kind of vision,"intuitive" and let it go at that.