GINKO TREE

Ginko tree, ginkgo tree in bright yellow leaves bloom in Southern California fall scene, Marguerite Ames, pictured here in her 90s, purchased her home in 1927 on La Jolla, California's exclusive Hillside Drive, and set about to create a garden using all the most rare and unusual plants she could find in her travels around the world...pictured here with her cat below the branches of a 35-foot rare ginko tree (the yellow leaves) she planted decades earlier.

Mrs. Ames told me (the photographer) there were only a few ginko ginkgo trees in the United States at the time, 1988, and that tree, native to Southeast China, goes back in history millions of years and is so evolved that insects do not bother it.

I remember Mrs. Ames originally stood in place holding onto her metal walker — when I suggested we set the walker aside, her caretaker quickly objected, but Mrs Ames said okay and then just as quickly she picked up her cat and looked at the camera — and just like that this picture was captured.

EDITORIAL MAGAZINE PERSONALITY FEATURE

For "La Jolla Magazine" environmental portrait with old woman, wearing red dress, holding big cat in fantasy garden.

This image was originally shot on Kodak Ektachrome transparency film using a Mamiya M645 1000s and a 35mm lens — I scanned it some time later on my Nikon 8000ED COOLSCAN film scanner.

Caption info contributed by Russell Ramsey, horticulturist, Bennett's Garden Center.
Photo by San Diego magazine photographer Gary G. Ballard, San Diego.