Beautiful Rubbish

The monkey pod trees at Manoa Shopping Center are bursting forth with their beautiful reddish-pink flowers. Albizia saman blooms are definitely pretty and remind one of eucalyptus or bottle brush flowers.

But they make a mess. The parking lot of the shopping center is layered with the fallen stuff. The worst thing is that the base of the flowers is sticky.

When they fall onto your windshield, they can’t just be swept away by your windshield wipers. They tend to roll around and generally cause a smeary mess on the glass that needs to be manually cleaned. And, they get into the car’s ventilation system when they fall through the vents situated beneath the windshield wipers.

I avoid this by parking away from the trees and walking to the stores – no matter how far away I have to park. Beauty has its place, up there in the trees, not on my car.

Avoidance … I can do that well.