And what a glorious day it was! The morning air was fresh and cool after all that rain from the day before and the sun was brilliant, coaxing us into the garden. I could hear the cardinals and robins singing in the fields and I was in heaven! I couldn’t resist and decided to plant two more trees and clean up and mulch the other trees from last year’s planting project.
A newly planted Texas Persimmon we planted. He's a native and should do well.
I just read about Ruth Stout. She was well known for her books on vegetable gardening and using hay to cover and mulch/compost her gardens. I was impressed with her way of working with nature and letting nature do what it does best – which, amongst other things is to decompose. She covered her vegetable garden in thick mats of rotting hay, which kept the ground and plants protected and the moisture in. And of course all the weeds out. I sort of tried to apply her technique to my own yard yesterday (not having any old hay laying around) and I would call this just an experiment.
In the picture above you see a young Mexican Buckeye that I had planted last year. Due to the drought I had to water these trees 3 times a week. By the end of the season the only place that had any grass growing was around the trees that I had been watering. I did not want to mow it in the fall because it was the only grass that had any seeds growing for the birds. So I kept them there for the winter, which the birds appreciated. Yesterday I cut all the old seed heads and dead blades of grass and laid them down around the tree (after giving them a good dose of compost), like you would do for regular mulch. This should decompose over time. That’s the theory anyway. We’ll see how that works out.
This tree looks dead, but thankfully it’s not. It’s a Live Oak which is considered semi-evergreen because it usually keeps it’s leaves on till early spring when the new leaves push the old ones off. But this little fella had lost all his leaves by the end of September and I thought he was pretty much a goner. 
However today I went to take a closer look and I saw all these tiny little red buds showing up on his naked branches. Excellent! Looks like he may make a comeback. Only time will tell. I recently spoke to an arborist and he mentioned that it can take up to 2 years for the damage of this last drought to take effect on some trees. Hopefully this very rainy winter will help them survive and recover.
