Streets are lined with gold
I live in a tract where every street has its own kind of tree, most of which were planted when the area in East Long Beach was developed in the early to mid-1950s.
Our street has towering pine trees, many of which have been chopped down in the intervening years, probably because they became too towering and perilous. During storms, we always looked nervously at the giant pine across the street that could take our roof off if it fell the wrong way, which, of course, it would.
It’s gone now, along with several others on our end of the block.
Knoxville Avenue, the next street over, had been planted with the loved/hated jacarandas, presumably for our own enjoyment. We could enjoy the purple blossoms from our house without the hassle of their sticky blooms pasting themselves to our car and the bottom of our shoes.
People on that block weren’t unanimous in their love of the trees, but few have been knocked down.
And now, I’ve noticed, while taking Annie for her long Sunday walk, that Josie Avenue, the second street over, has its own sort of beautiful and terribly messy trees, the largely unheralded Chinese Flame tree — identified by my arborist friend and tree-trimmer Sandy Allen, of Walt’s Tree Service, who came earlier this week to thin out our carrotwood tree in the front yard and tackle our giant birds of paradise in the back.
The Chinese Flame tree isn’t as lauded as the jacarandas — news sources don’t regularly do flowery features on them — but the tree’s tiny, bright yellow blossoms fall this time of year, blanketing cars, lawns, streets and sidewalks, giving everything a golden glow, and I’m sure they also find their way tracked into homes.
It’s a tree that doesn’t approach jacarandas in number. There were, when we last checked about six years ago, 92,865 city trees (those on streets, parkways and center dividers) in Long Beach, with magnolias being the most common with 7,573 in town, trailed by jacarandas with 6,815. Rounding out the top five: the Queen Palm (there’s a lot of them in Belmont Shore), the Brisbane Box (a sort of smaller eucalyptus) and the mile-high Mexican Palm, which you’ll see along many school properties in Long Beach.
What I’m reading now
So I guess my current No.1 author is Chris Whitaker, whose corpus I’m currently mowing through, having already enjoyed and blathered about his latest novel, “All the Colors of the Dark” and his third, “We Begin at the End.” Now I’m halfway through his first, “Tall Oaks.”
Whitaker’s writing and his stories are sort of a hybrid of Stephen King and Richard Russo, an unlikely pairing, but the novels are both calmly companionable as well as horrifying and suspenseful.
Whitaker has a way with kids’ characters, with the novels I’ve read so far featuring, in order, a kid who imagines himself as a pirate, a girl who believes she’s an Old West outlaw, and a boy who dresses and acts like a New York gangster.
Looking ahead, I’m definitely going to be picking up Whitaker’s second novel, “All the Wicked Girls,” and maybe even his Young Adult novel “The Forevers,” though warily after reading that book’s trigger warnings: “suicide, self-harm, abortion, disordered eating, domestic abuse, child abuse, homophobia, pedophilia, child sexual abuse, fatphobia, slut shaming and references to rape.”
Something for every literary if slightly out-of-whack young reader.
What I’m watching now
Because I wasn’t paying attention, I’ve neglected to watch Apple TV+’s “Bad Monkey,” before I almost belatedly discovered it was based on Carl Hiaasen’s novel and stars Vince Vaughn, one of my favorite comic actors.
Luckily, because I came late to the series, I didn’t have to wait a week between episodes and was able to watch almost the entire 10-episode series in a couple of hours-long binges. I caught all but the season finale, which airs tonight. It’s been a real treat, and you’re lucky if you haven’t seen any of it yet. You’ve got hours ahead of you to enjoy.
And also, this…
“Stopping the Steal,” is an HBO documentary about our former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election by a host of methods including threats against various election officials in several states and inciting the violent Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, which he rather enjoyed. If you’re having trouble choosing a candidate to run the country because one is pretty much a madman while the other one laughs too much, this might swing you in the right (or left) direction.