Jacarandas

One of the signs of late Spring and Summer here in Southern California are the blue blooms of jacarandas, an exotic tree that is a commonly planted ornamental.

The trees are native to southern Africa and South America and are apparently a common ornamental planting in Australia, just as they are here. The two pictures above were both taken on State Street, our main street downtown. You can tell from the sign in the second pic that the trees are in front of a women's shoe store named "Shooz." I shake my head whenever I walk by.
These two jacarandas are in Paseo Nuevo, also downtown. That's a pink bougainvillea trellised in front of a store on the right side.

Visually, I can never take jacarandas for granted, because as person raised in the Southeast, my brain seems to think that a large tree with blue blossoms is just wrong. I mean there shouldn't be any blue-flowering plant that's bigger than an iris or maybe a hydrangea, should there?