Palm Trees

I suppose it has to do with being born in Hawaii and raised in Southern California, but I love palm trees. The familiar sight of the tall silly looking ones growing along a ridge still brings a smile to my face. The sight of the shorter ones growing all over residential areas in Berkeley was a familiar one. 

We were told by someone from the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Foundation, whose lectures we often attended, that early settlers planted them next to their front porches where the family photos could be taken and sent back to relatives in less salubrious climates. 

Our neighbors bought one on sale because it was so pathetic looking and stuck it in the ground next to the front steps. Now, many years later, it is taller than their house and buckling the walk to the front door.

Carl Hiaasen ,an aAmerican journalist and novelist, who lives in Florida once said he  always liked to be photographed in the lead up to a hurricane standing near one of the tall palm trees.  Apparently that's because they sway and bend impressively and alarmingly in the slightest breeze.

I think they look better from a distance, and was quite taken by this row of different kinds of palms growing next to a vineyard in Carneros. Rows of trees are often planted as windbreaks next to vineyards, but palm trees are unlikely  to work very well for that purpose. I think they must have been put there for the same reason I like them...because they make somebody smile....