ArRiL, 1920 



GTiKANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



217 



cutting; a\v;iy tlio lU'ad fronds, thereby mak- 

 ing the trunk gay with bright llowers and 

 foliage from the ground up to where the 

 king, graceful, fern-like branches grow. The 

 pepper tree is another graceful shade tree 

 which nuikes a very quick growth. 



A beautiful tree which seems to grow al- 

 most equally well in all parts of California 

 is the yellow flowering acacia. At a dis- 

 tance it looks like a tree covered with great 

 gracefully drooping plumes of goldenrod, 

 only it is a paler yellow than goldenrod, a 

 pale lemon yellow with gray-green foliage, 

 about the shade of the foliage of the Cali- 

 fornia poppy. I remember one delightful 

 road leading up from the San Fernando 

 Valley which winds between shade trees of 

 yellow acacia which were literally fountains 

 of bloom when we were there. There were 

 also many of them in beautiful Mill Valley, 

 across the bay from San Francisco, and scat- 

 tered on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais. 



We were told that it had been an unusual- 

 ly dry winter, that everything was suffering 

 from lack of rain, but I certainly never saw 

 orange groves more beautiful than those 

 from Los Angeles to Riverside. In manj^ 

 the fruit had not been gathered, and the 

 effect of the long rows of large, symnietj-ieal 

 trees with their dark, glossy green foliage, 

 each branch tipped with new leaves, equally 

 glossy and of a pale green, together with 

 the deep color of the navel oranges and the 

 fragrant white blossoms, was so delightful 

 that one could forgive them if they were 

 not useful. But that is just one of the 

 ways in which Nature combines the useful 

 and beautiful in "my California." 



^lany other fruit trees were beginning to 

 blossom before we left the State on the last 

 of February. The bright pink blossoms of 

 the Japanese cherry form a charming bit of 

 color, and it is much used as an ornamental 

 shrub. Fruit trees were bursting into bloom 

 all the way up to San Francisco, and when, 

 on our way home, we finally climbed the 

 Sierras into winter, there were blossoming 

 peach trees so far up the mountain sides 

 that snow was powdering the ground under 

 them. 



THE expression, "all dressed up and no- 

 where to go," could never be applied 

 to anyone in California. There are 

 always the mountains full of enchantment 

 and illusion and ever-changing beauty. As 

 a San Francisco man said to me, "We can 

 reach the snow by ten hours' ride on the 

 train at any time of the year." At this 

 writing (Mar. 8) when here in Ohio the 

 mercury is way down in the thermometer, 

 when near zero winds are carrying a neigh- 

 bor's daily paper where he will never read 

 it, when the skies are gray, and there is 

 snow in the air, it strikes me that the Cali- 

 fornia way of receiving and storing snow 

 on the mountain peaks and utilizing it in 

 the summer for irrigating the thirsty land 

 is both sensible and comfortable. 



p]verv citv and town seems to have its 



easily accessible mountaau drives, drives 

 among the foothills and drives into winding- 

 canyons. Then there are interesting deserts 

 and still more intei'esting reclaimed deserts, 

 such as the Imperial Valley with its vast ir- 

 rigation system and its tropical fruits and 

 immense crops. There are Yosemite Valley, 

 the giant trees, Lake Tahoe among snow- 

 capped peaks, and the ocean beaches. 



The vicinity of Los Angeles is a great 

 l)lace for aerodromes as well as moving- 

 l»icture studios. One can hardly take a drive 

 toward Hollywood, Beverly Hills, or Santa 

 Monica without seeing several aeroplanes 

 in the air at once, and captive balloons are 

 a common sight. 



When you run across a number of people 

 in Los Angeles who are conducting them- 

 selves oddly, with a man turning the crank 

 of a moving-picture camera, you will know 

 you are seeing a company at work on loca- 

 tion. I had a great curiosity to see a bit 

 of picture-making and I did not have to 

 wait long. We ran across them at work a 

 number of times. 



Am I in danger of forfeiting the good 

 opinion of some of the nice, highbrow sub- 

 scribers if I confess to a fondness for good 

 moving pictures? Whether one approves 

 of them or not, the production of moving 

 pictures now ranks as one of the great in- 

 dustries of the world, and the bulk of them 

 are made in the suburbs of Los Angeles. 



THE going to places of interest in Cali- 

 fornia is just as pleasant as the arriv- 

 ing, if one drives, because of the won- 

 derful roads. During my first ride out into 

 the country I commented on the remarkably 

 easy riding car and was told it wasn't the 

 car, it was the roads, that even a flivver 

 would ride like a limousine on those roads. 

 They are very wide, wonderfully smooth, 

 almost entirely free from dust, and with a 

 dark surface which is very restful to the 

 eyes. Instead of being unyielding concrete, 

 of which so many are being built in Ohio, 

 those roads seem to have the elastic texture 

 of fine asphalt. It is bliss to ride over 

 them, just about as near flying as one can 

 get without leaving the surface of the 

 earth. 



There are over 90,000 miles of improved 

 roads in the State, not all so good as those 

 in the vicinity of Los Angeles, but very 

 good roads. I was told one could start from 

 Portland, Ore., and go clear down to San 

 Diego without going out of high. Of course, 

 they do not have the destructive alternate 

 freezing and thawing which makes the up- 

 keep of roads so expensive in the East and 

 North. 



DEAR mo, after talking to the extent of 

 some 2,000 words this article is re- 

 markable chiefly for the nice things 

 which I have omitted; just ask any Cali- 

 fornian if that is not so. It is a country of 

 infinite variety and beauty, "my Califor- 

 nia. " 



