Trees in Texas

In Georgia, where I grew up, the trees are such a part of your daily existence that their delicate reachings in the constant peripheral don't even garner your attention at all. They are like the complex goings-on in your subconscious, directing you, protecting you, real and there, but unacknowledged.
So while my daily thankfulness for the trees was missing, my knowledge about them wasn't. An organic dendrological education (yes, I confess I looked that word up)--bits of info about genus, phylum and species--float to you like leaves on a breeze when you live there.
And of course, trees also became part of my language and metaphor, like the idea about God knowing exactly the number of grains of sand. I always thought about God knowing the exact number of leaves and the ongoing seasonal accounting of them.
As I would lay in the grass talking with my sister, I found God in the black silhouettes of the branches with the dusk sky behind. My faith in Creation was strengthened by the overall symmetry comprised of random off-shootings and underscored by the perfection of form and function in the veins and cells and colors.
So when I moved to Texas in '04, it drove me crazy that I didn't know the names of the trees. I would ask, sounding very much the fool since there were pretty much only three types of trees in all of south Texas (one being the palm tree). But no knew any tree answers. I even went as far as going to the library, bookstore and internet trying  to give myself a mental catalog of these new gentle giants.
But just as in life, there are never any simple answers. The trees here, much like the state they call home, are neither gentle nor giant. They are scrappy survivalists who could make a little water go along way, who jealously and intelligently stockpile resources, and have numerous defense tactics at their disposal. The Georgia pines framed my youth, would the Texas brush give me a similar framework? Nope. That transition period right after the move proved too tumultuous for clarity and perspective. (That would only come with time and a humbling dose of 'growth opportunities'.) I eventually gave up my strange search for tree names and insight, letting it go as a passing fancy or a random distraction. But the truth of the matter is that while elegant, reaching branches and energy transforming leaves captured my imagination, what I actually was looking for were roots.
One interesting piece of tree information I did gather was about the palm tree. Their roots are extremely shallow and, even still, are incredibly adept at weathering any storm, even hurricane winds. It is almost as if it stays standing of its own strength, will and tenacity.
I found I could relate.