Long needles coat the yard

Overnight, the landscape had changed. The green grass, sprinkled with broad-leafed weeds, had taken on a new coating.

The longleaf pine needles had fallen with the timing of a theater curtain. All leaped to their deaths together, a mass suicide of the pine needles. The shrubs and the lawn all wore a new coat of brown needles that gave the yard the look it takes on after an unexpected snowfall, but with brown needles instead of white flakes. The needles clung to the juniper and the azaleas. They coated the lawn and formed a brown carpet over the asphalt. No Winter Wonderland, this was an Fall Fling, a takeover by the needles that usually hide in plain sight high up in the longleaf pines. It was a coating as thorough as any early snowfall.

"Here's to the land of the longleaf pine," goes the state toast, and in the eastern half of that state, the longleaf pines still thrive, though not in the masses that once covered the Coastal Plain right down to the shoreline. The tall, thin trees are worrisome to some residents, who know they can snap in hurricane winds and fly like a javelin through a bedroom wall. These trees need a forest where they can cling together against the wind. A yard tree all alone cannot hide from the hurricanes. Chain saws eliminate the possibility, no matter how remote.

I've paid men with chain saws and trucks to take out diseased trees whose needles had all fallen, and limbs and bark, too. But I've nurtured the other trees, and this Monday, after a weekend away, I find my yard turned brown, coated like a cake with too much brown frosting, dripping and uneven over the shrubs.

With a rake, I coax the needles into piles, from which they will mulch flower beds and herb gardens. I find the green still there beneath the needles, and the driveway's black beneath its brown cloak. The needles will find their place, though my labor. Here's to the land of the longleaf pine. Grab a rake.

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.