Sierra Madre Wistaria Festival

Last weekend, I found an online story about a "Wistaria" Festival, held in the small town of Sierra Madre (bordering Pasadena on the NE, and nestled into the base of the San Gabriel Mountains). My annoyance and embarrassment for the writer who had clearly misspelled "wisteria" led me to the article more than any interest in the festival. I was surprised to learn that the festival celebrates a 116 year old wisteria vine that holds a Guinness World Record as the world's largest flowering plant. In full bloom, it bears 1.5 million blossoms, weighs 250 tons, and has branches that are 500 feet long. Oh, and apparently the wisteria plant was named for Caspar Wistar, a physicist and teacher. Ever the cynic, I checked a dictionary and encyclopedia and found that both "wisteria" and "wistaria" are proper spellings for the plant. Hmph. Anyway, the festival and plant viewing are held only one day per year (3/14 this year), so we decided to check it out.

This is the upper part of the wisteria's one acre of branches. The original lot on which the plant grew was divided into two, so now the wisteria covers two back yards.

This is some of the lower part of the wisteria. The upper part is behind the woman in the foreground. Without a hike up into the foothills or a helicopter on hand, it's impossible to get a picture of the whole thing. The trunk in the bottom right-hand part of the picture is one of many places where the vine touched down and grew roots. It's not the origin of the plant, though!

Another view of the lower part of the plant. The young woman in the purple was one of this year's Rose Parade princesses. She and her friend were quite fond of Jonathan, and I was proud to share that, just a few years ago, my wife was a Daffodil Princess.

Here we are, right next to where the whole thing started. Who'd have known that a gnarly bunch of vines would grow from a 1-gallon bucket in 1894 to produce this? The tour also provided an opportunity to try out a kid carrier back pack that we got for doing hikes with tikes (well, just one tike at the moment). He freaked out about getting into the contraption, but had a good time once we were moving.

Jonathan liked some time to play (albeit in someone's front yard) after the tour.

In town, there was a large street fair with all the usual fare: arts and crafts, over-priced snacks (we couldn't pass up the kettle-cooked almonds), live music, and fantastic people-watching.

Peace, dude.

Native American inspired stuff.

Someone was getting a little restless after no nap and too much time in the stroller.

I hadn't done much more than back up the car by the time that Jonathan crashed. He took a micro nap in the car, but then we kept him up until bed time (otherwise, it's a 4 or 5 a.m. wakeup call for mommy and daddy!).

We had a great So Cal day and followed it up by having our first barbecued meal of the season.