Taking a moment today after working too hard, I look up through the leaves of a mesquite tree to see that the pods are opening and dumping their fruit. The mesquite is one of the coolest trees in Arizona. With roots that go as deep as 60 feet, there is often more wood below ground than above. Used for cooking, mesquite can lend great flavor to any cookout; just check out Cattle Exchange Restaurant in Canadian, Texas, for proof of that. The fruit from the pod is used by the Apache and is ground into flour or fermented to make an intoxicating drink. The gum from the tree can be eaten as candy or used as cement to repair pottery. Who knew?