This is the time of year when I always ponder my intense and complicated relationship with the Jacaranda tree in my front yard. Every May, this canopy tree bursts into bloom with periwinkle blossoms that look like a purple cloud from heaven.
It lifts your spirits just to contemplate it. Or maybe not.
Like so many boyfriends I’ve had in the past, this Technicolor tree is beautiful to look at, but leaves a sticky mess to clean up afterward.
Right now, I’m slightly annoyed that my 19-year-old daughter, Curly Girl, has insisted on parking underneath it, because I know what a mess those blooms are going to be to wash off, unless they just decide to embed themselves permanently in her paint, which I wouldn’t put past them.
See, Jacaranda trees are tricky. They seem to go to some sort of school in how to cause maximum disruption to your universe.
When they start to bloom, you’re transfixed by the purple buds that appear. They quickly pop out all over into large, showy clusters of trumpet-shaped blossoms, looking like something you should have to pay money to view. My street has several of these trees, but some neighborhoods have canopies of them, and it’s like driving under a purple haze to motor through them, like in Santa Ana, Beverly Hills and Fullerton.
But, wait. If you actually live with one of these trees, as I do, they start showing their dark side. Again, like many of my past boyfriends.
Their blooms just waft so gracefully to the ground, it’s almost like they’re floating. But, then, after landing, they hang on for dear life. (See note on boyfriends above.) They have some sort of evil sticky sap inside of them that makes them extremely difficult to sweep off the sidewalk. Possibly the only flower known to man that gives a leafblower hell (OK, I actually like them for this.)
Lord help you if you don’t get it off your car within eight seconds of its landing there. It might become permanent.
Jacaranda trees are actually natives of South America, though many of ours came from South Africa, where they were transplanted and now cover entire neighborhoods in cities like Pretoria and Johannesburg. They grow into large, attractive street trees that have deep roots and don’t break up the sidewalks, but have small frond-like leaves and seeds that tend to become messy when the tree is done with them.
My Jacaranda tree throws a huge amount of dried up debris from its branches all the time, making my sidewalk look like the messy toddler on the block. Admittedly, I’m too lazy to go out and sweep it off, but none of the neighbors’ trees are so disreputable.
However, the normal detritus from the summer, fall and winter has nothing on spring, when my sidewalk is covered with slippery-yet-sticky purple blooms every day. If I go out and laboriously sweep them off, it’s like a snowy day. They’re back in 90 seconds.
Sometimes I can only see the aggravation, even though I’m trying not to become my neat-freak mother, who would have taken an axe to that tree long ago.
Then, someone comes to the house and bursts out, “Wow, that’s so gorgeous.” And I look up and think, ‘It is really beautiful.” And I forgive my tree and frolic in its magnificence, knowing that in a few weeks, it will all be over until next year.
