"I'm gonna rent myself a house in the shade of the freeway."

Tree #79 Mimosa

Jackson Browne caught our apprehension about a meaningless future in "The Pretender". The image of living by the freeway conjured a certain fatality about life, a giving in, a surrender. Trees do not get to choose where they grow, at least the wild ones. These shots depict life by the freeway and next to an industrial storage and repair site for garbage trucks. The mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin) with its bipinately compound leaves landed here as a seed and grew, in the shade of St. Jude, just off I-40 at exit 1C. 

This tree was one of the harder ones to photograph. It was not near any parking place being at the exit from a freeway onto Danny Thomas. To get here I had to cross the bridge you can see in the top left of this picture and park in an industrial warehouse access road, hoping I would not get ticketed or towed before I could get back. I had to walk about a quarter mile along Danny Thomas with no sidewalks in mud at times. 

A volunteer tree by the freeway

 The day was overcast, so the pink flowers did not show up that well. These are quite attractive trees even inside a junk-yard.

Beautiful tree, ugly dump truck

To see some mimosa leaves up close in a lush green environment see the wild grapevine shot near Holmes Park. (vine #5)

Here I continue the mimosa story with an easier tree to photograph. This tree is at Good Winds Landscape and Garden Center at the corner of Sunset Road and Eastern Ave. in Germantown. 

Mimosa in flower July 5, 2014

The flowers are like pink fluff all over the tree

 

A scientist is a mimosa when he himself has made a mistake, and a roaring lion when he discovers a mistake of others. Albert Einstein

Mimosa is one of the trees listed without a champion in TN. The problem is they are meduim sized trees and fairly abundant. Farther south they sometimes line the freeways, so how can you choose a champion tree?