Here's to the land of the longleaf pine

I spent a good chunk of Monday and will spend more time today raking up pine straw, which has been falling like long, brown snowflakes in the autumn breeze. Since moving to eastern North Carolina nearly 30 years ago, I have come to appreciate the useful qualities of the needles of the longleaf pine tree. Those needles have served as mulch, border and walkway at various times in my yard. I have volunteered to rake other people's yards in order to get the pine straw. I have filled my car trunk with bales of commercially gathered pine straw and divided the bulk into loose mulch wherever needed in the yard.

Some time back, I encountered a neighbor who was raking pine straw out of the street near his home. I asked if he was cleaning up the neighborhood. No, he said, he was saving the $4.50 per bale it costs for commercially available pine straw. What falls in the street is clean, cheap and easy to rake, he said.

Eastern North Carolina was once covered by longleaf pine forests, and early settlers took lumber, turpentine and pitch from these forests. The tar in the Tar Heel State originated in these pines. Old lumber — heart pine — from these trees is still treasured. Few of the majestic trees remain. Modern tree farms plant faster-growing varieties, and many longleaf pines in residential areas were broken by hurricanes or cut down by homeowners nervous that the big trees would fall on their houses.

I wouldn't call the pine a particularly pretty tree. It lacks the majestic spread of a mature oak or the autumn colors of a maple or a dogwood. But they grow tall and resilient with deep roots that help them survive drought and winds. And every fall they bestow on the ground around them a blanket of pine needles that can be raked into useful shapes — plant bed mulch, walkways, lawn borders, flower beds. Other trees have prettier leaves, but those leaves aren't as useful as pine needles. The oak, maple and dogwood leaves have to be raked off the tender lawn but aren't very useful as mulch. Piled by the curb, those leaves will be sucked up by the city's vacuum truck and turned into the rich, conglomerated mush of compost, which is good for plants but not much to look at.

Meanwhile, I'll still be raking pine needles from the lawn, driveway and street.