When I was a kid in Louisiana, there was a great weeping willow in our yard, its trunk all twisted and gnarled. The long dangling branches with small narrow green leaves made a whispery sound in the breeze. And, yes, the tree did weep - flecks of water weighty like nectar, sometimes in the middle of summer.
Once I saw a small snake gliding down a vertical yellow stem, the leaves as bright green as the snake. Had the snake not been moving, I never would have noticed it.
We also had a wild cherry tree that the birds enjoyed. We heard that people made wine from wild cherries. There were two large pecan trees in the front, the one to the north was especially productive. An odd tree that was perhaps a conifer had flat needles arranged like a bottle brush and small soft spherical cones; it stood near the base of the driveway. And there were two circular stands of very tall pines that stretched skyward, at least three times the height of the house. Each follicle contained three needles. I remember this because we used to braid the needles. (There was a local tribe of American Indians who weaved sturdy bowls out of the needles of the piney woods of central Louisiana.) Squirrels would strip the cones to get to the pine nuts, and toss the spiny tabs of the cone on our heads below. After a rain, the air would be poignantly scented by the pines.
I visited our former home in May. The weeping willow and the cherry tree are long gone, broken by storms, weakened by unwitting use of herbicides. One stand of pines disappeared across the years, and the other is losing about a tree a year for unknown reasons. Only four or five remain. The pecans and nameless conifer were taken down this last winter by the highway department for a road expansion.
There are newer trees there - a healthy orange tree and a grapefruit tree. An old pair of Magnolias continue to endure; flowers grace the low-hanging branches, their limbs entwined.
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