Flowering Trees
I have written before about my obsession with trees. There is just something comforting and stable about trees. They are big and lasting and weather most storms of any sort. I would suggest that bushes are fussy, but trees are regal. My favorite painting is of a tree on the pampas of Patagonia. I have planted eleven trees on my property in the past four years. They range from a very mature Irish Strawberry tree to an array of four Palo Verde trees, a Jacaranda tree, a Silk tree, two Crepe Myrtle trees, a Tulip tree, a Coral tree and an Indian Fig tree. That does not count the many Bonsai trees I have, which I estimate at about ten actual miniature trees versus succulents or other pseudo-Bonsai plantings. When I last had my trees professionally pruned, I negotiated to have the northern half of the property pruned because I didn’t think the southern side was too overgrown or even populated with many trees. While I think the tree balance still favors the northern half, I am more inclined to think that all of my trees need regular tending.
I would separate my trees into several different categories. In this area it is very normal for people to have citrus and fruit trees to harvest. Indeed, I inherited two large orange trees, two smaller lemon/lime trees, a cumquat tree, a fig tree and a plum tree. They are all on the south side of the property. The second category is what I would call boundary blocking trees. Those are different ficus trees and occasional mesquite trees and live oaks. And then there are my favorites, the flowering trees. The most plentiful flowering tree on my property is the Palo Verde, which happens to be blooming right now. When you walk beneath the canopy of yellow flowers, you can hear the extreme buzzing of all the busy bees gathering the pollen and nectar. Palo verdes are somewhat unique in that they grow no leaves per se, but just have an intricate web of small little green branches that must act to gather sunlight for chlorophyll for the tree. Like most flowering trees, Palo Verdes don’t grow very tall, but rather branch out laterally and create beautiful and artful canopies that filter light softly below them. The other flowering trees are the Tulip, Coral, Silk, Jacaranda and Crepe Myrtle. These are the ones that yield vibrant pink, purple, red, orange and yellow flowers that stand out as you drive by them. I will add one other tree which looks and acts like a small tree, but may be classified as more of a bush and that is a pink Bougainvillae that gets is pink leaves at least three times per year.
Buying and planting trees is a daunting task. Only a few times have I undertaken it all myself. I am too price-sensitive to go the full “you buy, we plant” program since those folks can’t count less than $1,000 and then go up in multiples thereof. I am much more amenable to buying my trees at the Javier Nursery, which is a low-cost local nursery with decent stock and having them deliver it curbside. I then get some combination of Joventino, Jose (Mike’s gardener) or Omar (Handy Brad’s guy) to come dig a hole and plant it. I then have Andre come and lay some irrigation tubing around it to protect my new investment and I’m good to go.
I am thinking about this because at this moment in mid-July we have an abundance of flowering trees in full bloom. In a word, they are lovely. The silk tree is perhaps my favorite since it is so very full with dark green leaves and then topped with a frosting of pink and white feathery flowers. It looks perfect and it does the exact job of shielding the view from the road of part of the play area that I had intended when I lost the big sumac that used to live in that ground. Next to it is the purple Jacaranda tree that is so plentiful in these parts, being used to line and beautify many of the roadways. This tree comes mostly from the southern hemisphere of South America and South Africa. It is plentiful enough and low-maintenance enough for it to be used, like here, my municipalities to beautify their streets. They say that Pretoria, South Africa is the Jacaranda capital of the world. Next to the tall and somewhat whisky Jacaranda is the much lower and fuller Coral tree. This one has reddish-orange flowers that bloom in spring (it missed this year due to the replanting) and it grows very fast and very full. The branches of this tree are quite treacherous with big spiny thorns all over them. Mike is a bit of a Coral tree pruning expert so he came over yesterday to show me how to thin it out aggressively so it would grow upward and create a proper canopy rather than keep a bushy look. By the end of five minutes of pruning, he was bleeding profusely from his hands. He considered it a badge of manly honor where I considered it a good case for wearing gloves when you attack that particular beast. That tree comes from India and east Asia, but it thrives here in the subtropical climate of San Diego.
One of the banes of my tree-loving existence on this hilltop has been the red Crepe Myrtle we planted three seasons ago. I pay lots of attention to that tree and both water and fertilize it regularly (Fertilizer is not my thing, but I make an exception for Myrtle). I get a few red flowers on it each year, but nothing like the bright burst of red I am used to seeing around this area where Crepe Myrtle’s are quite plentiful. I not only will keep trying to get the tree to its full potential, but last season I bought a supplemental lavender Crepe Myrtle to contrast it. I pruned its inner branches aggressively last fall with the hope of starting it on a better path than the red one. It has paid off in that it looks quite full and healthy with its dark green leaves, and much to my pleasure, I see that on its new growth it is starting to sprout nice lavender flowers ever so subtilely. But in all the places where I have Palo Verdes, the yellow blossoms with their bees make the garden look like it is early spring even though it is mid-summer. I have five of the trees on the areas beside the road, two more between the house and the hot tub and then my new ones behind the garage and on the perimeter of the lower hillside. They are all singing their desert song right now and they are the trees that look most indigenous in this environment since they are highly drought tolerant and still show their blooms when water is plentiful.
After all these flowering trees finish their show of color and have fed the bee population for the season, I have my single tulip tree in the upper back corner of the garage. I planted it there to take the place of two large blue agave that sang their final songs two seasons ago. That tulip tree was a great choice for that spot because it does a nice job oof filling out the visual gap, but it is also a late bloomer, sending forth large orange tulip-like blooms in its higher branches, all in November when the other flowering trees have started to rest for the winter. If I can get the coral, jacaranda and silk trees a bit more coordinated next year, I should have flowering tree blooms from March through November, which will be nice. That will leave some small gaps for the various cacti to strut their stuff with their more rare, but equally magnificent blooms when the heavier rains of winter coax them out. These trees are starting to make me feel like Henry David Thoreau and while I have no pond to contemplate, these boulders on the hillside are a fine substitute for inspiration about the wonders of nature as expressed in flowering trees at the moment.