Here’s a nice tranquil forest pool with some escaped oleanders for you this week. I’ve had a hectic week to the max so I felt like reminding myself that trees and waterfalls and streams and sunsets still exist, and are still as beautiful as ever, and will be waiting for me when I get my work done and can go enjoy them again.

Oleanders are a Mediterranean plant, so it makes sense that they’d grow so well in California. They need very little tending here, it seems, and highways are lined with gorgeous pink blossoms every year, no watering needed. There’s even a town named ‘Oleander’ down south of Fresno, although I guess they’re not officially a town, they’re ‘unincorporated’. I wonder what that means specifically, whether you get special privileges if you’re an incorporated township vs. not. Oleander had a post office until the 30’s, so I guess it’s not that. I suppose the unincorporated places don’t have to provide sewage and water or fire service to their houses. The official definition of an ‘unincorporated area’ is that it’s not governed by like a town council, but the one close to me has their own governing body, so I guess this is a bit of a loose definition. California has a huge number of unincorporated areas, unlike many states, and there’s at least one in every county, even with millions of people living in it. Los Angeles County for instance has 65% of it’s land in unincorporated areas. I guess the post office recognizes some unincorporated areas, but not others, depending on their own metrics, whether they’ll deliver mail to you or not under the name of the town. I live in an area that’s neither of these things, just the ‘county’, although I write the name of the closest city on my address. There’s no local governing board where I am, unless you count the local neighborhood snoop society which gets together to sing Christmas carols and put up glow-in-the-dark ‘don’t run into the deer’ signs. They also had a craft fair a few years ago, I have such a fun neighborhood, I met some glassblowers and furniture makers, and bakers and people who made scented pine-cones. A few years ago they all got together and planted daffodils all along the roads, and these little flowers have been surprisingly hardy. I enjoy looking for them every spring. It’s one of the few plants that the deer won’t eat to the ground. Anyways, I love my neighborhood. All my neighbors have oleanders. How’s yours?

Xander’s isn’t bad either.