Tale of the Lonesome Pine

I cut down an old Scotch pine in the corner of the estate yesterday.

This tree was on the property when we moved here fourteen years ago. I'd strung Christmas lights on it, and it looked great in the wintertime laden with snow. But it was one of those trees that had a normal main trunk and a second trunk growing out from the base. Eventually, I thought, the bastard trunk was going to crack and crash to the ground - probably just at the time Dabney was squatting innocently in its path or I was mowing the lawn. And the main trunk had become denuded at the top, and had quit growing. So it had two strikes against it.

It was great fun wielding the chain saw like a modern-day Paul Bunyan. I now have a dozen stout logs about fireplace-sized, and a pile of branches with needles. I think I'll use some of the logs to decorate the fireplace in the living room. You're not supposed to use pine logs in a fireplace because of the sap, as I recall, but they will look sharp. A cousin in Tulsa has white Christmas lights in their fireplace year 'round, and I thought that looked neat - almost like a night light - so I may replicate that.

I don't know how old this tree was. It was probably planted when the house was built. It struck me as interesting that a tree like that can take twenty years or so to grow, and can be cut down in a matter of an hour. No wonder so many forests in the eastern half of the United States were wiped out as pioneers moved west. Log cabins, firewood, furniture, boats down the Ohio and the Mississippi - the building stuff of a nation. When you fly over in an airplane, you get a sense of the impact man has had on the landscape.

So what will I do in place of the old lonesome pine? I picked up a redbud a couple of weekends ago. I'll plant it near the house, and probably move my forlorn garden east, away from my pecan trees, so it will get more sunshine. I didn't harvest much this year - might have been because of the record heat, but it might have been because of too much shade, too. Doesn't hurt to shuffle things around a little bit.

Now about that pecan tree in the corner of the yard, overhanging the neighbor's fence ... I wonder if it's time to take it out. Hmmm.....