Opelousas has been here a long time and its oaks have the trunks to show for it, wide low-limbed things over yards where zydeco carries out through a screen door on a Saturday. Valle Tree Services LLC keeps them in shape — removals when a tree has become more worry than shade, pruning to open a crown and take weight off a long horizontal limb, and cleanup when a St. Landry Parish squall drops half of one across a fence. Late spring is loud and green here and everything grows into everything else, so a summer's worth of clearance gets cut in May. Afterward the yard reads the way it should: a big tree with room around it and grass underneath. Shade like this is not automatic; somebody has to keep after it.