Jacaranda Season in San Diego:  On my bicycle ride today I went to Balboa Park to see what the seasons are doing with Kate Sessions at the Western edge of the Park.  The Jacaranda trees are in full bloom.  Someone has decorated the statue of Kate Sessions with flowers and a cloth scarf.  Someone has left “stuff” from a hotel room in the box at the foot of the statue.  I hope a homeless person will find them useful.  The flowers have been placed in her right hand and her left hand is holding the familiar pine cone.  

I like Kate Sessions, the statue and especially the real person the statue represents.  She taught at Francis Parker School in the early days, but when I was headmaster there, the memory of Ms. Sessions was strong.  She planted something very important into the thinking of her students, something that led to San Diego’s being the botanically beautiful place that it is today… and eventually to the commemoration of her life with the statue at the Western entrance of the Park.

Whenever I see the Morrow Bay Fig Tree behind the Natural Science Museum and whenever I see the Eucalyptus Trees in the middle of their spring peel, I think of Mrs. Sessions, and I feel thankful that she lived and worked here.  I don’t know if she was responsible for the Jacandra Trees being planted along streets all over San Diego, but I do know that it is her spirit that lives in those trees.