Photos: John and Suzanne’s Mom.
I wish my bird-of-paradise house plant looked like this, but I know there’s no chance!
It’s not that I haven’t been to California before — quite a few times, in fact. For weddings, work conferences, friends. But now, visiting the brother who’s been dealing with some health challenges, I’m astonished all over again by how exotic and foreign it feels to this East Coast person. How amazing that both Massachusetts and California are part of the same country!
I’m not here for sightseeing and haven’t been taking walks in any of California’s beautiful parks, but I’m astonished by the loved and cared-for plants in all the parking lots around here. My plant-identification app is getting a workout.
Seriously. Imagine an otherwise ordinary parking lot that smells as sweet as the star jasmine below, perfuming the Trader Joe’s shopping center where we ate too much at a Mexican restaurant last night!
One thing I’m still hoping to photograph is something my sister-in-law mentioned — the flurry of little green parrots she often sees at dusk. Parrots! Really? Where I live, you could maybe see one lonely parrot if it had escaped from a cage.
Climbing beside the entrance to my hotel, is a charming fuzzy thing that my app tells me is a brush cherry. Who knew?
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 