From the porch of Belmont, visitors could see the copse of
old live oaks in the front yard, and I sat at a table overlooking the overarching
umbrella of trees. However, I didn't see the grandfather oak on the property
until I went around the side of the house to look at Mary Wyche's hidden
garden, and I almost gasped at the sight of the Quercus Virginiana
standing sentinel over the back of the house. It was grand enough to warrant
the photograph in this blog.
Louisiana is noted for its oaks, the sweeping limbs of which
are often as large as the trunks of other trees, and the weight of the branches
brings them almost to the ground. These grand trees aren't cut anymore, but at
one time their heavy, durable wood was used to build ships. Today, members of
organizations like the Louisiana Live Oak Society would cringe at the suggestion
of cutting even one of them. The LLOS has been around since the year before I
was born and is dedicated to preserving these Louisiana beauties. One of the
organization's registrants is The Seven Sisters Oak in Mandeville, Louisiana on
the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, which is 1200 years old and has a girth of
over 38 feet!
On this latest trip to my home in New Iberia, I found leaves
from the live oak in my backyard mounded everywhere and jokingly threatened to
cut it down, but when I thought about the shade it provides in humid Louisiana
weather, I was sorry to have voiced such sacrilege. Instead, I paid several
hundred dollars to have a few limbs trimmed. The worker who raked the leaves
accumulated in my yard remarked that last year's acorn crop from the oaks had been abundant, and this year the oaks had shed more leaves than they usually do. He
claimed that many of his customers had been felling the trees because of
the heavy leaf shedding and last year's plenteous acorn crop. Although acorns and leaves litter
the yards of those of us who prefer pristine lawns, I can't imagine ending my
prize oak's life—it was once valued at over $25,000!
The sight of Mary Wyche's massive oak in the backyard of
Belmont Plantation sent me scurrying home to look up Walt Whitman's comments
about the oak trees growing in Louisiana. In Leaves of Grass, he
extolled the beauty of these trees: "I saw in Louisiana a live oak
growing./All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,/Without
any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green.../And I broke
off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a
little moss,/I brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,/It is
not needed to remind me of my own dear friends..."
About the massive oaks around New Iberia, I often say:
"If only the old trees could talk, what stories they could tell that I
would write about!"
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