Why Lonesome Pine?

Seems kind of strange to live on a road named after a loud bird, then name your property after a tree, right? Well, we're just strange that way. Actually, the name came about nearly 10 years after buying our 7 acres. We often tried to come up with a cool name...like Wood Song, or Singing Oaks, or Wayne's Junk Pile. But nothing really stuck until...

In 1999, we had the opportunity to sell the pine trees off of our property. (We have many, many oaks too!) This was just fine with me! I hated the pine trees on our property. One in particular. This ONE we called the "Shooting Tree." It was HUGE! It took two people finger-tip to finger-tip to reach around it (almost). The tree never really did anything to my dh (or to me), but he liked to shoot at it! His friends and our neighbors liked to shoot it, too! It was THE perfect tree for target practice. The year my dh bought me a .38 handgun for Christmas, I learned to shoot it-- using that tree. About once a year my dh would get a bucket and dig lead out of that tree; thus creating huge dug-out holes in it. I can see tree huggers having a real problem with this..so don't tell them.

Anyway, after many years and many pieces of lead being added to and removed from this tree, I began to have real fears of this tree dying and falling on our home. Specifically, our bedroom would be a direct hit. Every time a big thunderstorm or hurricane would come through, I would think of that huge tree falling on us. I hated that fear! So when we had the chance to have it removed, we jumped at the chance and were on hand the day they cut that "Shooting Tree." It gave the logger a hard time...but we cheered when it hit the ground!

Now here's where the name comes in...A few weeks after all the trees were cut down and loaded onto log-trucks and carted away we noticed the loggers missed ONE tree! It was next to the road, outside our fence, still on our property--but it had gone unnoticed. We thought about chopping it down...but we decided to leave it alone. Soon after, we started talking about the Lonesome Pine and somehow that seemed to be the perfect moniker for our vast estate!

Whew! Aren't you glad you hung in there long enough to read this super interesting story??? Just remember, I'm writing for posterity...so when they make our "estate" an historic monument, you will know the story of how it got its name!