Jacaranda tree
My Mexican friend tells me that I am looking at a "hock-a-rahn'-da".
I see the intense blue-purple blooms and am again amazed that anything that beautiful needs a name at all.
I'm here in Pasadena, looking at trees and shrubs that were never meant to be here at all. They are not like the native vegetation that fills the canyons and arroyos that are too rugged to cultivate. ...and they demand a lot of water.
The whole state of California is in the most extreme drought condition. Wild fires dot the landscape near San Diego and stretch up the coast to communities near Los Angeles. We can sometimes smell the smoke in the evenings. The Santa Ana winds are here, bringing temperatures into the low 100's, far earlier than their normal appearances late in the summer.
At my home in Florida, torrential rains have brought down tree limbs in my yard and nearly made the swimming pool overflow. Temperatures are in the high 70's and low 80's. Flowers that had been slow to bloom in prior years are blooming prolifically.
Change is upon us. Weather patterns I used to be able to count on have begun to become very unpredictable. Storms have become more violent, although most of the worst weather has bypassed my home to the north and west, making a mess of the Florida Panhandle, southern Georgia and the Carolinas.
Climatologists are predicting that there could be a sea rise of up to 7 meters in the next two-to-three hundred years. My home, currently about 45 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, will be only 20 feet above sea level when that happens and I could probably walk to the new shoreline from my house in less than an hour--if I could actually live long enough to see the change happen.
I listen to those who deny that climate changes are happening--or at least deny that humanity has anything to do with the changes--and just shake my head. I know that it is hard to accept that the changes are happening and that they mark something that is truly permanent as we head out the door to work today, just as we have every day of our lives. Everything seems about the same on a day-to-day basis. Yet those changes are hard to deny for those of us who have lived over the past 70 years. Of course, humanity will adapt to the changes, although not without political, economic and social changes. It is likely we will have to endure hardships that will make the wars of the last 60 years tame by comparison. How many people will be able to continue to live when water and food resources shrink and disappear? Will we poison what resources we have left in an attempt to control them? I am curious about what the future will bring to humanity. Fortunately or unfortunately, I will not be around to find out.
I need to enjoy the Jacarandas while I can.