Bottle-Brush and Grapefruit Trees, Spring in Arizona

Have you ever seen a Bottle-brush tree?  They are quite amazing.  In spring they grow long switches, I suppose they are the flowers, that look like red baby-bottle brushes.  They are long, narrow, and covered with tons of red bristles.  These trees must have been very popular back in the mid 1950’s in Mesa, because I remember seeing them all around town.  We had one in our back yard.

I don’t suppose I would remember the trees except for the day ours fell over.  I must have been very young, maybe 3 or 4 years old.  When I try to remember exactly what happened it escapes me, but if I just let my mind relax hazy pictures rise before my closed eyes.  I’m in the bathroom, although I can’t actually see it, I just know that's where I am, and it is very windy outside.  Suddenly I hear a loud noise, but I'm not scared, just surprised.  The next memory I have I'm standing outside in the back yard, looking at a huge tree lying on the grass, and mom and dad are explaining to me that bottle brush trees don’t have deep roots, so sometimes they fall over if the wind is too strong.  Bizarre!

Another vague memory stored somewhere in the back of my head is of our big grapefruit tree.  It was huge.  I remember sitting at the breakfast table, eating grapefruit halfs in a bowl.  Sometimes mom let us sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar on our grapefruit.  We kids wanted to cover the grapefruit with sugar, but she always stopped us.   Mom used to make grapefruit punch in a tall glass picture, mixed with just enough sugar and water and ice to make it sweet and mellow.  Grapefruit punch was not as sour as lemonade, it was more like sweetened water or the jello water mom sometimes made for us.  It was like a drink of cool, fresh water, with just a little sweetness and flavor added.  I always liked grapefruit punch more than lemonade, which to me was too tart.

Anyway, the grapefruit tree in our back yard was huge.  When I was too little to remember I fell off a high chair that stood under the tree.  I suppose it was there to help mom pick grapefruit, not just for kids to play on, but when I was two I fell off the chair and broke my collar bone. That didn’t stop us from climbing in the tree, though, and I can still remember standing under it, looking up at my little brother Phillip, who was lost in the branches somewhere above, unable to find his way down.  Dad had to climb up to get him.

We went down to the Valley last weekend.  The citrus trees were in bloom, and such a heavenly smell assailed our noses it was almost like being in heaven.  As we drove down Greenfield road I was amazed to see long red fronds hanging from an ornamental tree growing along the side of the road.  It was a bottle-brush tree, just like I remembered.  Fifty years have come and gone since I was a little girl in Mesa, but thank goodness some things are still the same.