Pine Trees

I love trees, not just pine trees.  I hate to see trees cut down.  When we lived in Blue Ridge, my shop was on a main road to a lumber yard and daily I would see logging trucks full of hardwoods with huge tree trunks that must have been hundreds of years old.  That made me sad.  I wonder if those loggers replanted the areas they cut down.  Hmmm.

Alright, back to pine trees.  Huge, soaring pine trees are all around me, except around the small house that was my father-in-law's.  As he grew older, he became scared of pine trees, knowing they could fall on his house.  So he had every single pine tree on his property cut down.  Every single one.  At least there are plenty of pines on my daily walk.

Some folks don't like pine trees.  They are messy, oozing pine sap, and do tend to fall on cars and roofs with the slightest provocation.  Springtime in Georgia brings the dreaded pine pollen to millions of allergy sufferers.  I'm sure there are more negatives, but that's all I can come up with right now.

On the flip side, pine trees are a renewable resource and tree farming is big business.  Talented musician, conservationist, and tree farmer Chuck Leavell has a great web-site with many articles about his love of the land and trees.  I admire that he uses his fame to teach others about conservation. 

When I see pine trees in yards, I immediately start looking for bags of pine straw.  Growing up, my mother would cruise through neighborhoods looking for pine straw that had been raked up, bagged up, and taken to the curb for disposal.  She could spot a likely stash blocks away.  Back then, many people did not reuse their own pine straw, but we did.  Many, many times, she would screech to a halt and jump out to check the bags.  If it was mostly pine needles and not mixed with leaves or trash, she would toss the bags in the back of our Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon.  My brother and I would roll our eyes when she made us get out to help or to run up and ask the homeowner if we could take the pine straw.

Funny now, that I when I drive through neighborhoods with lots of pine trees, I still look for those bags, sitting at the curb.  Nowadays, I rarely see discarded pine straw.  People reuse their own and if you don't have pine trees, you have to buy the bales of pine straw.  But I keep looking!

Spreading pine straw is an art.  You can not just drop a bale on the ground and kick it around.  A true spreader knows you take sections and gently shake the pine needles apart so they fall around your prized shrubbery just so.  I'll admit, when I see lawn maintenance guys spreading pine straw, I watch to make sure they are doing it right, even if it is not my yard. 

If you ask most people which tree is their favorite, most will say an oak or a dogwood or a maple.  All are beautiful, especially in the fall.  But I still like the scrubby, ole pine tree.