Love, hate...
Tuesday, 26. September 2006, 21:22:36
I have a love hate relationship with Ponderosa pine trees. 
I have 7 of them in my yard. They are huge coniferous trees with long needles and large cones.
I think they are quite beautiful and they shade my house and cut the wind. They also are a natural habitat for many birds. On the down side, they shed. I know, they are coniferous, they are supposed to be evergreen but they shed something ALL…YEAR…LONG!! In the Spring it is the small female cones and lots of pollen. Then come some little seeds and now in the fall it is the needles. Not all of them but a HUGE amount. They drop from mid August through into October. They don’t disintegrate so you have to sweep them, rake them up, get them out of your gutters and literally hand pick them off any other plants. None of this is simple because they are so long and are bunched in groups of three. They catch on every tool and soon you are picking them off the tines of the rake.
And when you think you have got them all cleaned up, along comes another wind and more needles to rake 
When I first moved here, I thought there must be something to do with all the needles and so I learned to weave them into small baskets and coasters. I only did that for 2 years. It is very labor intensive and dirty work. Now they all get taken by the truck load to the garbage dump. I suppose they get burnt. Too bad, so sad.
I will continue to put up with the bad habits of these trees because they are so beautiful and they are a dying species in British Columbia. Entire forests of pine are being killed off by an insidious insect, the mountain pine beetle. There are a few dead trees already in my neighborhood so I know the beetles are here. I hope that my pine trees are strong enough to withstand an attack.
I have 7 of them in my yard. They are huge coniferous trees with long needles and large cones.
I think they are quite beautiful and they shade my house and cut the wind. They also are a natural habitat for many birds. On the down side, they shed. I know, they are coniferous, they are supposed to be evergreen but they shed something ALL…YEAR…LONG!! In the Spring it is the small female cones and lots of pollen. Then come some little seeds and now in the fall it is the needles. Not all of them but a HUGE amount. They drop from mid August through into October. They don’t disintegrate so you have to sweep them, rake them up, get them out of your gutters and literally hand pick them off any other plants. None of this is simple because they are so long and are bunched in groups of three. They catch on every tool and soon you are picking them off the tines of the rake.
And when you think you have got them all cleaned up, along comes another wind and more needles to rake When I first moved here, I thought there must be something to do with all the needles and so I learned to weave them into small baskets and coasters. I only did that for 2 years. It is very labor intensive and dirty work. Now they all get taken by the truck load to the garbage dump. I suppose they get burnt. Too bad, so sad.
I will continue to put up with the bad habits of these trees because they are so beautiful and they are a dying species in British Columbia. Entire forests of pine are being killed off by an insidious insect, the mountain pine beetle. There are a few dead trees already in my neighborhood so I know the beetles are here. I hope that my pine trees are strong enough to withstand an attack.
WIDGETIZE