AN ORANGE TREE FOREST (PART 2)

Let me digress from the book to talk about real Southern California orange trees.  Those are European olive trees above, but I chose them because they're similar in appearance to the unusual type of orange tree that I used to see on a college campus near where I live.  I liked to imagine that the trees were planted by David Fairchild, a locally famous botanist who is reputed to have been the man who introduced the Eucalyptus tree to this city.


Anyway, this campus grove was an incredibly magical and quiet place. You could easily imagine trolls and witches living there. That's amazing when you consider that there was always a hurly burly of students about fifty yards away.  The grove was accessible, and much loved, but few people wondered into it because the ground was soft and inconvenient to sandals and tennis shoes. I never saw orange throwers in there, never graffiti, and I never saw any homeless people. Most importantly, the trees were small enough that you could pack a whole magical forest into a small space. 


That last point is why I'm writing this. A tiny forest is the perfect solution for urban parks and backyards, and yet you never hear orange groves spoken about in that context. What it amounts to is that an important landscaping tool has been overlooked. That's why I was so glad to see this kids book. It's all about the fun you can have in a miniature forest.