country n news-homestead plant

COUNTRY N NEWS-HOMESTEAD PLANT

when we start to build a house for habitat for humanity
i usually go look over the property trying to identify
plants that need to be saved
as well as look for trash trees that need to go
like ligustrum and hackberries

if you dont know what a hackberry is then you
dont have them on your property

i have spent $2,000 removing them near my house
over the last 15 years
so when i look at these properties thats what im looking
at into the future
a huge expense for these folks

the most recent property is almost a full block where
eventually the plan i think is to add 6 houses
the block use to be part of an old homestead
weve found lots of barbwire and rocks and cedar posts
old gates old water troughs lots of chicken wire

you can tell where the fences use to be because of
the lines of hackberries around the property
now hackberries are a useful tree as a food source
for birds
but they are a nuisance for property owners since
they die after about 25 years
dropping their dead limbs slowly everywhere
sometimes on your house or car or fence

one of the first plants i found was this big old what i call
a heritage oak
hidden by all these vines and hackberries and brier patches
brier patches mean scratches
just look at the scars on my legs sometimes

then this group plus two other groups cleared out this
heritage oak so you could see its beauty

sitting close by was a huge old pecan oak
sure its a native one
not one of those soft shelled ones we buy now


texastrees,org
then
sitting close to the pecan was a vitex tree like in the above
picture but bigger
a huge one
this year it was loaded with its beautiful purple plumes
its the largest one ive ever seen
so far its still entombed with yards and yards of vines
and briers
over the next few months it will be released from its
tomb

then just above the trailer of chomped down hackberries
by this energetic group you can see the upper branches
of the desert willow
a beautiful sometimes hard to find tree
this one is probably 25 ft tall


sungardensinc.com
wish i had one in my yard

then
one day as i was at the back of the property
i looked down and saw this plant with red flowers
it was all wound up in stickers and briers
so i labeled it with yellow tape

just after this rain it bloomed
this is what it looks like
to me it looks like a salvia greggii or autumn sage
but its leaves are darker and larger and the edges
are darker almost brown
but
its beautiful
knowing it was going to be destroyed with the next
construction this winter
and
knowing it may be hard to identify it this winter
i dug it up
transferring to a new safe environment
hoping it will live on for another generation

its safe here at the country n

the organicgreen doctor