We live in a Central Oregon area of undisputed natural beauty. Our own neighborhood is called 'King's Forest' mainly because of our beautiful big Ponderosa Pines. The housing subdivision was started about 1980 and these trees (and many junipers) were left. One of the things that drew us to our home in 1992 was the size of the lot. In an era of increasingly smaller and smaller lots, our neighborhood has lot sizes ranging from 1/2 to 1 acre of natural high desert beauty.
I love our pines...they are gorgeous to look at with the green against a pale blue autumn sky....they smell good and sharp....and when the wind blows there is nothing like the sound of the wind blowing through the pines. In our hot summers, breezes in the pines will always be a special memory. They also drop wonderful pine cones...great for a basket before the fireplace, or food for the squirrels.
We must have at least a dozen of these trees either in our yard or right on the property line. We are blessed!
One thing they do that is not quite as nice is shed their pine needles twice a year in spring and fall. (A pine's version of dropping fall leaves) I posted a clean-up-our-yard post last week about cleaning up these needles. But it seems that every fall needs a good strong wind to blow the last of the leaves or in our case needles off the trees. You guessed it, we had several days of high winds and storms last week. A whole new batch of needles came down. So early Saturday morning found us out once again raking up the needles. This time was much faster however, as the layer was thin and scattered. We were able to rake them up and plop them on top of last week's pile in about an hour.
We put them in our utility trailer along with last Saturday's...
and the whole trailer full went off to our dump, where it was 1/2 off yard debris day. Everything looks ready for winter now. The pines have no more brown needles, but only bright green...and the dirt below them will remain clear until next spring. It isn't quite time for the holidays until this chore is finished up for the year....so let the holidays begin!
I love our pines...they are gorgeous to look at with the green against a pale blue autumn sky....they smell good and sharp....and when the wind blows there is nothing like the sound of the wind blowing through the pines. In our hot summers, breezes in the pines will always be a special memory. They also drop wonderful pine cones...great for a basket before the fireplace, or food for the squirrels.
We must have at least a dozen of these trees either in our yard or right on the property line. We are blessed!
One thing they do that is not quite as nice is shed their pine needles twice a year in spring and fall. (A pine's version of dropping fall leaves) I posted a clean-up-our-yard post last week about cleaning up these needles. But it seems that every fall needs a good strong wind to blow the last of the leaves or in our case needles off the trees. You guessed it, we had several days of high winds and storms last week. A whole new batch of needles came down. So early Saturday morning found us out once again raking up the needles. This time was much faster however, as the layer was thin and scattered. We were able to rake them up and plop them on top of last week's pile in about an hour.
We put them in our utility trailer along with last Saturday's...
and the whole trailer full went off to our dump, where it was 1/2 off yard debris day. Everything looks ready for winter now. The pines have no more brown needles, but only bright green...and the dirt below them will remain clear until next spring. It isn't quite time for the holidays until this chore is finished up for the year....so let the holidays begin!
You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled. --Charles Haddon Spurgeon
2 comments:
Your pine trees are beautiful, and I can imagine you are very pleased to have the raking chore finished up for another year. Also, I see you were able to get a picture next to your title. It looks very pretty.
I love pine trees--I like the way they smell. (o:
And I agree with the comment you left on my blog about not brushing past Thanksgiving to get to Christmas. I feel the same way. I must say though I almost ended up changing my blog decor to Christmas because I couldn't find a Thanksgiving picture I liked. Then praise the Lord I found the one I ended up using. (o:
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