Bamboo Trees on Ortega Avenue

Bamboo Trees on Ortega Avenue

Photographs from Mountain View
(July 18-27, 2014)

By Peter Y. Chou
WisdomPortal.com

Preface: I take Bus #34 or Bus #40 each morning to Showers Drive in Mountain View and board Bus #35 to Montrose Ave in Palo Alto where I spend the day at Foothill College Middlefield Campus Computer Lab. Often I'll get off at Ortega Avenue and walk to Hastings Square West to deliver the TV Guide page and comics from San Jose Mercury News to a friend. While walking there, I'd pass a bamboo grove in a yard on Ortega Ave. Several of the bamboo trees protrude outward to the sidewalk, creating a shady patch. I'd pause and clasp my palm around four of the bamboo stalks leaning outward and contemplate on the bamboo's flexibility, endurance, strength, and wisdom. This inspired the poem "Bamboos for Blessings". While walking to Showers Drive on Latham Street, I passed an enormous Pepper Tree. Looking at the rings of a sliced-off branch, I noticed the shape of the Platonic Lambda Λ "Soul of the Universe" which inspired the earlier poem "A Pepper Tree Stops Me Cold". Photos of this Avalon Towers Pepper Tree are shown at the end.