Another tree & a pumper

A large California Pepper Tree at the intersection on the top of Bastanchury Hill. They grow quite large and live a long time. My G'mother's house in Los Angeles had one that almost covered the back yard. We loved playing in it.

Flowers and berries will be on at the same time. The flowers are closer to the tip of the drooping branches.

And the berries grow further up the branch. There is almost nothing inside the berries - no "meat". The trees are not planted much anymore, I suppose because they are so messy - always dropping leaves (too skinny to rake easily), flowers or berries. This tree is under planted with ground cover, so no raking is needed.

Just to the left of the tree is this oil pumper on the down swing. Visitors to SCalifornia are amazed to find a pumper between a parking lot and a major street, in a parking lot, in a park, or taking up half of a lot in a housing development. Most are fenced in a similar way and there are thousands in the LA Basin.

This is the same pumper going up - up,down,up,down,up,down - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Nobody in this area owns the mineral and oil rights under their property, the oil companies snapped them up over a hundred years ago. I don't think anyone minds having them around, now that the engineers seem to have figured out how to keep them from squeaking and groaning.