The Fairy Tree
On our property out by the barbecue patio and hot tub there is a wonderful tree. It is a baobab or more commonly known as a Madagascar Bottle Tree. It is sometimes called an upside-down tree because of its unique shape. They are common to South Africa, Madagascar and Australia and they look pretty much like an Orangina bottle through the trunk, which in the case of our specimen planting is perhaps seven feet tall and five feet in diameter at its thickest point. From the top of the trunk, the tree spreads out to form a uniform semi-spherical crown of branches and leaves. The leaves are long and thin (4”x1”) and droop downward towards the ground. It is a beautiful tree that “makes” the northern side of our house and garden very special. There are plantings around its base and a stone bench, but most notably we have added seven or eight Mexican multi-pointed metal star lamps that are suspended among the branches. These lights have small glass beads in them which make them magical when we turn on the lights in the evening. Between the twinkling nature of the suspended star-lights and the lace-like leaves surrounding the tree crown, it all makes for a very magical visage on a warm Southern California evening.
This highlight makes having dinner under the palapa that covers our grill and patio tables extra special. My brother-in-law Jeff designed and built the palapa for us a few years ago. I thought at the time that he was over-doing it, but am now very happy that he went to the lengths that he did. It all makes for a wonderful gathering spot for when we get past our quarantine and can gather again with friends and family for an evening barbecue. Jeff even added LED multi-colored up-lights in and amongst the columns and beams of the palapa to make the whole scene extra magical (If only I could remember how to work the lights from the remote control).
This patio is where I sit in the morning since it faces the rising sun in the east and is the warmest outdoor seating area at that time of day. One of the greatest things about this property is that everywhere seems to sit on the absolute top of a hill. I know that can’t possibly be, but it sure feels like it. From this patio, with this grand spreading tree in front of me I look downhill to my right, over that cactus mound topped by the lovely and artistic live oak. To my left is a giant fifteen-foot wide boulder with a considerable notch or two taken out of it sometime over the millennia by some form of natural erosion. In the larger notch we planted a ponytail palm several years ago which has prospered and now rises to about the height of the notch and creates a wonderful aesthetic look. The ponytail palm more than most plantings in the cactus and succulent gardens looks like it is right off the pages of a Dr. Seuss book. I am not sure it bears any genetic familiarity to the baobab, but the large base and slender trunk is a perfect match for the bottle shape of the larger tree. It is set amongst black river rocks that lead you to the start of the waterfall (man made, but all very natural looking) that cascades down to the hot tub past the other grotto in the boulder. That whole area is accented with black river stones, which is why if makes sense in the whole setting. Behind me, the hill falls off into the spa, which is set between who huge boulders, which provide the perfect natural privacy barrier accented with cactus and succulent plantings which have grown naturally around them and to which the local bee population is drawn throughout the day.
This setting on this little hilltop makes this patio wonderfully breezy and cool in the warm California sunshine, helped by the shade of the palapa and the lacy shadows of the bottle tree leaves. I seem to carry on about my descriptions of the settings around our home. I suspect it is somewhat due to a combination of my newness to being out here full time and the spate of nasty weather we have had over the past few weeks. I have owned this house for over eight years now, so none of this is new to me, its just newly permanent to me. I am still getting used to the fact that I get to wake up to this natural beauty every day. I am sure I will stop bothering my readers with these descriptions, but I doubt I will stop gawking and commenting to myself about how beautiful it all looks and feels. Right now it is quiet except for a distant motor sound. So quiet that the loudest thing is the light rustling of the baobab leaves in the breeze. Looking straight ahead at this ethereal tree with its magical star lights and its peculiar and fairytale shape is almost all I can think about at this moment. Maybe this is what being at peace really means.
I spent the last day scrambling with our bankers to file for some of the PPP funds being made available to small businesses through the SBA from the big $2.2 trillion stimulus package. We had filed as quickly and as timely as we could given that we had to apply through a bank with whomever we had an existing relationship. That bank is very diligent, but not known for moving at warp speed. We were hearing rumblings of the bucket going dry and I was pushing for confirmation that we were in for our slice of the pie (several hundred thousand dollars, not a fortune, but meaningful to a small start-up business). There were a series of last-minute documentary fire drills in terms of signed filings and re-filings due to the unique ownership structure of our company and the SBA rules of understanding where their money was going. The confusion was not all ours. The rules were confusing and somewhat of a moving target as everyone trying to get some of these funds has undoubtedly learned. Definitions of percentage thresholds and ownership types (individuals versus entities) were confusing. We were working through two layers of bankers and then the SBA and it seems everyone had slightly different standards and definitions which had to be reconciled. We finally got filed and I learned this morning that our loan got approved and numbered (the key identifier to assure funding) at 1am (I didn’t dare ask what time zone that was since the one loan officer and I are on Pacific time and the other and the SBA are on East Coast time).
I awoke this morning to the good news of our approval and loan identifier so I feel that all the jumping through hoops was worthwhile. We also got funded by a UK grant this week for qualifying R&D work that we do in Scotland. We are looking for all the grant pockets we can find to qualify for. So far we have tapped two and we have three others in process. This is all very legitimate and none of it represents double-dipping, but it is available because we are doing research on technology that is vital to combating Climate Change. The world’s great scientific minds have decided that they need what we do, or more accurately, what we are trying to do. I believe that as well. The hard part is determining if the time and cost of doing it makes economic sense and by what margin. That is what 2020 and 2021 will tell us. We will either be a hero or a goat as Charlie Brown likes to say. In the mean time I will continue to spend my time split between chasing dollars (and Pounds and Euros) and staring at this lovely Fairy Tree. It is hard at any given moment to decide which is a better use of my time.