Our backyard is very green throughout the year. The trees in the picture are ficus. The aloe vera growing in a big tangle at the edge of the back patio is a plant that Native Americans in the Southwest and in Mexico used to treat rashes and burns. It is used commercially in ointments and salves.TO SHOW THAT WE ARE GREEN in San Diego...The photos are from our back yard. After yesterday’s photo du jour my fine friend, Антон Гуленцов, in Smolensk asked in an e-mail:

“My dear Friend,
 
Do you have time in San Diego when there is no leaves on trees at all? It's winter and the trees have leaves like ours in October. Wonderful!
 
With Love,
Anton”


I wrote back:

“Anton, My Friend,
     The liquid amber, laurel, sycamore and flowering fruit trees do finally drop their leaves... in January or February.  The old leaves are usually pushed off by new leaves coming on... The same trees grow in colder climates where they become bare at the same time that you are having autumn.  We just had our first rainfall in over six months, and it has been wonderful.  I long for lightening and thunder, which we almost never see and hear.  We have a very long dry season.  The amazing thing is that we can actually see snow on the mountains to the east of San Diego.  Early in the week when we got about three inches of rain all in a day-and-a-half, there was a dusting of snow on the mountain where I was hiking in mid-November.  I actually like rain and snow... I like to walk in the rain... like to turn my face up to it...  We will have rain off-and-on from now until April... then we go into the long, long dry period.
Jerral”

Anton wrote back:


Yes, my Friend, I hope to see it all one day. So, you just do not have bare trees? Your trees are eternally with leaves?
 
Love,
Anton

I wrote back:

Anton, My Friend,
Actually, we do have a time when some trees are bare skeletons in an otherwise green landscape. Sycamore trees are bare for the longest time of any trees. They are beautiful wimps, the last trees in springtime to get new leaves; and they are the first to lose them in the fall. Our poplars and the cottonwoods along the river give up their leaves without waiting to have them pushed off by new growth. The trees behind our house, and all along the street where we live, are tropical ficus trees that are eternally green. They actually lose their leaves, but it’s not noticeable because a new leaf always pushes off an old one. Palm trees are never without green fronds. Most of our ubiquitous eucalyptus trees (which came originally from Australia) don’t lose their leaves all at once.
Jerral