TheBanyanTree: Jacaranda time

[Peter Macinnis]

Each year, I measure the arrival of low summer by the frosting of 
purple-blue that delineates the jacaranda trees.  The blooms arrive as 
October progresses, then in early November a rain or wind storm drops 
many of the flowers to the ground, making a blue carpet that makes those 
living nearby smile, and makes those having to clean them up snarl.

By St Andrew's Day, November 30, the jacarandas are on their last legs, 
but by then the cicadas are in full blast -- they will start showing up 
this week.

Those of us who are alert to seasonal markers know that many of them, 
the animal ones, are coming earlier than even ten years ago. Migrating 
birds like the koels arrive sooner, the cicadas emerge from the ground 
sooner, bush flies appear sooner, but plants are smarter: they react to 
day length when deciding to flower, and the overall rise in climate has 
no effect on their timing.

Last Thursday, we were over on the other side of the city minding our 
grand-daughter, and I commented to Chris that the jacaranda in their 
backyard was getting close to flowering, if you got really close.  We 
got home Thursday to find a "parcel to pick up" message.  I had been 
working on the MacBook on their back deck, and the flies had been 
annoying me a bit, so I had decided that a beard  trim and a haircut 
were needed before we took off for a Hunter Valley weekend -- this is a 
wine area about a degree north of Sydney.

I trim my beard myself, but get the barber to do the hair, so armed with 
the card for the Post Office, I headed off at 8:10, and found myself 
walking under a jacaranda, looked out as I walked, and spotted three 
more.  Then I got the topiary trimmed, had a coffee while I waited for 
the Post Office to open and found it was a monster, but carried it 
bravely home, sweating all the way and spotting more trees jacaranda 
verging on blooming, then we headed off up the coast.

Thus alerted, we played spot-the-jacaranda on the way up, while taking 
cousins from the Oz west coast around the area on Saturday, and coming 
home again yesterday.  More and more were gathering, and this morning, 
there were even more. Every day, new ones spring into clear view, and I 
can already see four from where I sit.  In a few days, the effect of a 
suburb under attack from paintball hoons will be clear to all.

Hopefully for Malibu, we will soon stop hearing about their fires, but 
as I look out to the horizon, about 10 kilometres away, the air is full 
of smoke haze already.  Usually there is a gap between the end of the US 
fire season and the start of ours, time enough for what we call the 
Elvis helicopters (after the first of them to be seen here) to be 
dismantles, freighted here and set up ready to drown our fires.

It is about 30 degrees today (86F), so I will stand outside tonight, and 
listen for the first cicadas.  Once we would have waited until early 
November, but the Earth and the cicadas are impatient to get started 
with declaring high summer, when the mornings feel as though somebody 
left the oven door open.  The Hunter Valley was full of cicadas, just as 
Opera in the Vineyards had flies clambering into the wine until the sun 
went down.

I have moved the winter clothes into storage -- the jacarandas say I can.

-- 

   _--|\   Peter Macinnis           petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au
  /     \  Breeder of Pedigreed racing leeches (GT stripes extra)
  \.--._*  centipede farrier  (special bulk rates for millipedes)
       v   http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/index.htm