Purple Haze: Jacaranda season

In October and November, Sydney turns purple. All across the city and its suburbs, and particularly on the north shore, glorious jacaranda trees come into bloom, creating quite the visual spectacle.

I (and really most people I know with a pulse) love the jacarandas because their color is just so happy and they last such a short time. We have plenty of jacarandas in our north shore neighborhood ...

View of the neighborhood from our balcony.

... but Partner-in-Crime decided to plan a little adventure around jacaranda viewing this weekend. I'd read that the suburb of Hunters Hill has billed itself as a "garden suburb" and promotes itself as a place to view jacarandas. So, we hopped in the car for a purple stroll. We found a lovely, historic suburb with some nice little walks along the coast right in the midst of some pretty posh homes (at one point, we were practically on someone's tennis court). And, we found plenty of jacarandas.

We found a little parrot in the neighborhood, too.

Incidentally, I recently read a story (perhaps apocryphal) that the way Sydney became so inundated with jacarandas - which are native to South America - is that a nurse at a local hospital used to give jacaranda plants to new mothers as a gift. I don't know if it's true, but I like the idea of thinking that's where all these gorgeous spring blooms came from.