The weather is very mercurial here in Southern California. The weekend was crystal clear and cool, but by Tuesday, the clouds blew in, speckling the sky with piebald shreds like a torn-apart blanket. Yesterday on my commute home, big fat drops of rain spattered on my windshield as I drove along the coast.
Today, the Santa Ana winds are up, hot fierce wind from the deserts pouring through our canyon to the ocean, a harbinger of record heat that's expected by Sunday. When I went out this morning to walk Jack, it tossed my hair into my eyes. Walking on the street, I could hear the wind rush through the trees, high overhead.
Pinus sabiniana, also called the gray pine or the digger pine, are tall open trees with long needles and large cones that, when they drop onto our flat rooftop, you can hear them fall. The seeds were once prized as food by the Native people who lived here. My neighbor has three tall pine trees, growing in the strip between his driveway and ours. When the wind is high, it rushes through the pine boughs and sounds like ocean waves.
Here in Topanga, though our hills are thickly forested with coast live oaks, and volatile, non-native eucalyptus, it's the pine trees that speak the wind to us.
It is breaking my heart to see the pines in the Valley dying. The tall trees lining the streets in Northridge are browning out and disappearing. We get good winds here, too, and it is the most wonderful sound and feeling when the trees react to the winds.
ReplyDeleteYour pines there remind me of the Ponderosa pines we have in Spokane. I love to hear the sound of the wind blowing through the pines, causing them to sway and dance. (I don't love to worry about them falling on houses, though...)
ReplyDeleteThose Santa Ana winds make me think of fire season and danger. Is there anything good about the SA wind?
PS: I adore that photograph!
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