So there I was, taking my early morning route to my office, admiring the red, bronze, green and yellow leaves of liquidambars in December…
…when I came upon an unusual sight. Instead of the dangling seedpods that you see on these trees this time of year, as on this branch…
…I ran across several trees with different sorts of ornaments suspended from the almost-bare branches.
Here’s a closeup view. The ornaments? Cell phones!
By now you’re probably asking, they look festive enough, but why cell phones?
Well, these trees were part of the landscaping around the Jacobs School of Engineering on the UCSD campus, named after benefactors Joan and Irwin Jacobs, of Qualcomm fame. (That’s Qualcomm as in one of the main players in the design and manufacture of cell phones…)
I guess cell phone ornaments probably won’t be catching on in households unless they’re the households of billionaire telecomm execs, but it gave me a laugh. And isn’t it great to see trees other than conifers all dolled up for the holidays?
December 18 2010 | Categories: gardening | Tags: cell phones • holiday decorations • Liquidambar styraciflua • those autumn leaves • UCSD | 6 Comments »
We’ve just returned from a couple of days in L.A. The drive up and back isn’t one of the great scenic routes on earth, and for the most part it’s not particularly interesting botanically.
The plantings of trees along I-5 and the 405 over 150 miles mostly draw from tried and true California plant staples like palms and eucalyptus, with stands of Italian cypress and occasional pines concentrated in the more residential areas. They’re attractive enough and generally drought-tolerant choices, but the rhythm of palm, palm, eucalyptus, palm, cypress, palm, eucalyptus, palm gets a little repetitious over the course of two and a half hours (if traffic is moving).
A new kind of tree has been appearing over the last half dozen years, however. With the recent growth of cell phones, there’s been an explosion in how many cell towers you see–More bars in more places translates into more cell towers in more places. The providers have occasionally tried to hide the towers by trying to make them pass as trees–usually with pretty comical results.
To keep myself amused on the trip I shot a few photos of roadside trees. See if you can spot the cell towers in the grid below. (Answers are at the end of this post, but I don’t think you’ll need the answer key.)
Trees and cell towers
Give up? The cell towers are the far right in the top row (fake palm), the first in the third row (fake…er…what is that supposed to be? a redwood? roadside in Southern California?) and far right in the third row (plain vanilla cell tower). At least the cell tower trees are drought-tolerant.
August 25 2008 | Categories: landscape design • places | Tags: cell phones • cell towers • drought-tolerant landscaping • Interstate 405 • Interstate 5 • Los Angeles • Orange County • roadside plantings • trees | 1 Comment »
At the risk of sounding too much like Christian on Project Runway, I’m about to embark on a little “vay-cay.” I leave San Diego on Wednesday in my old Jeep Cherokee for what could be its last major trip to the American West.
These days I worry about gas prices, my carbon footprint, and the mechanical reliability of my trusty vehicular companion that I’ve had since it was a baby, back in 1993. My preferred modes of transport the last seven years has been scooters I’ve owned, the first a zippy little Aprilia Scarabeo 150, and now a big Buick of a scooter, a 582cc Honda Silver Wing that weighs over 500 pounds. It has no style, but I got it for cheap. (For all its massiveness, it still gets almost 50 miles to the gallon.)
Above: the Shell station down the hill on April 30, before they raised their prices.
But the thought of strapping two camera bags with three cameras, two serious tripos and a big steel box of film to the scooter sounds a little crazy. And that’s before you factor in the camping gear and multiple changes of clothes to keep me looking semi-snazzy. Important things, you know. Besides, when I floated the idea with John–mostly in jest–his jaw dropped with concern.
“Yellowstone? On a scooter?”
Maybe I was cruel to even scare him like that, particularly after the episode six years ago when he spent seven weeks taking care of me when I was piled into a wheelchair after a little meeting of the body with hard pavement. But the Jeep it will be for this trip. And not only will the trip be in a car, I’ll at John’s urging be packing a cell phone, in case the Jeep breaks down.
That cell is a big move. Even though I’ve been doing email for over twenty years and have had my own web site for well over ten, I’ve been a total Luddite when it comes to cell phones. Yes, they’d be handy to have sometimes, but I’m not willing to chance being turned into one of those people–You know the type: device planted firmly to ear, muttering inanely about foot cream or last night’s pasta salad to whoever will listen, and often doing it in a moving vehicle while driving distractedly like a chauffeur on a Quaalude jag. Pray for my soul, folks.
So, cellphone in pocket, I’ll be heading north through Las Vegas into the Nevada outback, through desert towns with great names like Elgin, Carp(?!), Ely, Pioche, Jackpot and Caliente. (In naming just six cities, I’ve named virtually all the cities on the map on this route that cuts due north through the Great Basin, along the Eastern edge of Nevada.) The nominal destination is Yellowstone, and I intend to get there. But who knows what else I’ll find. There might even be some cellphone reception along the way!
May 19 2008 | Categories: photography • places • rambles | Tags: carbon footprint • cell phones • desert towns • nevada • scooters • vacations | 1 Comment »
