March is a time when trees full of lavender and blue explode along many avenues of Guadalajara and stain certain rural roadsides like the magical blood of ancient Nahua gods.
Winds left over from February strew fragile bell-shaped jacaranda blossoms across both street corners and horse troughs, blessing them each with rich color at a time when the dry season is parching almost everything else brown and gray.
Jacarandas announce that the warm spring of the tropics is taking hold, that what winds come now will be tepid and laden with the dust of fields waiting for the June rains.
These bursts of dazzling color have long seemed especially appropriate for a city such as Guadalajara that has just about everything. Today, these much-thinned and pruned forests continue to ornament the Pearl of the West with a color bluer than the sea, with sidewalk rows more stately than maples, their drifts of fallen petals dampening the brick dust and dry season debris that pervades the city this time of year.
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