It's that time of year

In our back yard, we have the mother of all catalpas. My estimate is that it is 73 feet tall (a very big catalpa is 40 feet tall) and is 11 ft. 3 in. in girth. When we give it appropriate food and water, it can be a very pretty tree. Its leaves are enormous, almost the size of tobacco leaves, so it provides a very dense summer canopy. Around July 4, it flowers out very prettily.

Fall is not its best time of year. Catalpa leaves don't offer a grand show of foliage colour. They just turn grey-brown and fall. As a flowering tree, it produces seed pods: large seed pods, resembling something like a long ethnic cigar. The stuff falls apart quickly and mulches nicely, otherwise it'd be an uninspiring mess. All this is on my mind because I spent part of the day raking, and another part joining the scrum at the town dump's leaf pile.

It had been my impression that native peoples smoked the leaves, much like tobacco. This may still prove true, but my evidence to date suggests that they smoked the seed pods, and that the seed pods are somewhat hallucinogenic. (Note: you have to drill down pretty far at this link to find this information.)

So, it's just as well this town frowns on open burning. If I set fire to a good-sized pile of catalpa leaves and pods, chances are that I'd get the whole neighbourhood stoned.