If Just for the Jacaranda Trees

For the last two months, I walked, wandered, wondered around my neighborhood in awe of the trees lining the local streets. It’s as if one day, all of them decided that this was the morning to bloom—and just like that, we had a bright, violet haze brushed across the sky.

That very day—as I was starting to miss summers in the city (New York, that is)—I fell in love with L.A.

It felt silly, to be honest. Frivolous at best (who stays for a mile of trees?) and yet, I found them irresistible. Magical. For all of July, they made for the most beautiful view and no one could convince me otherwise. By mid-August the flowers started to fall; that was when I noticed that they were these trumpets of incandescent purple, still every bit as vibrant scattered on the ground before me as they were when they lived above my reach. The petals seemed familiar if just by shape alone, but I was sure that in all my childhood years spent scouring the grounds at Longwood Gardens (a bi-annual family outing), I’d never seen something so… purple. I should’ve Googled, I know, but I think I enjoyed the mystery, too.

It wasn’t until two weeks ago when I read Eve Babitz’s Slow Days, Fast Company (while waiting at the LAX leaving Los Angeles, ironically) and realized that these trees not only had a name but were singular to Los Angeles. That I was not alone in loving them, and that the Jacaranda Trees left an indelible mark on both this city’s transplants and ephemeral travelers, too. Vladimir Nabokov would choose L.A., Babitz wrote, if just for the Blue Jacaranda Trees.

To stay or to go. But oh! If just for “all those lavender flowers, like cotton-candy clouds…”

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xx