.......this is for you, Maggie! Here's what our pine trees make and shed, as well as their needles every year! The huge pine cone on the left is from our gorgeous long-leaf pines, which also have really long needles; the center skinny cone is from the local white pine, which has short needles.....and the short, fat cone on the right is the most widely grown here.......the loblolly pine. We have 29 pines and poplars and dogwoods in our yards around the house; not much grass, but gorgeous green mosses that don't need mowing! The trees give us great shade in the summer, and are a good windbreak in the winter when storms move through. They do make a mess, but we always have friends who want to come and rake up the straw for free, and DH vacuums the other debris with the trusty John Deere mower thingie and dumps it in the edge of the woods. And that piled onto broken branches, etc. makes a wonderful shelter for the wildlife hereabouts!