Hello friends. I'm not asking for help. I just wanted to document the challenges I'm facing. I just bought a house in the Texas Hill Country town of Bandera. It's about 40 miles north west of San Antonio. The soil is rocky, humidity is a little lower than SA, and temp is 5-10 degrees cooler than SA. Also the air is much clearer, so I can see the Milky Way from horizon to horizon on the really clear nights - even under the street light. Amazing!

A week ago the yard was completely brown from years of no watering. Then we got 5.5 inches of rain Friday two weeks ago. Now it's green but not like I thought it would be. The dominant plant is horse herb with secondary from a grassy plant which I have not identified yet. It all seemed dead until the rain came. Here are some pictures.

{{gwi:114663}}

The obvious feature is the sawed off tree. This area has been under attack by oak wilt, a fungus that gets under the bark of certain live oak trees and kills it over night. Apparently that tree was one of the unlucky ones. All the shrubs which were once up against the house have gone. The yard slopes down from where I was standing. The neighbor behind me is about 15 feet lower than my house, but he's about 75 yards away. Between us is a "green" space. The other tree to the left is loaded with pears. Farther to the left (out of the picture) are a couple of mature mesquite and crape myrtles. On the right of the driveway is another type of oak that is not susceptible to wilt.

{{gwi:114664}}

This shows the condition of the soil. Another stump which needs to get started rotting, cracked dry soil, and weeds.

{{gwi:114665}}

This is the north facing corner of the house - hence the life. There is a lot of horse herb and a little St Augustine. I will be nursing the St Aug back to health and getting it to spread and fill the yard.

We have water restrictions. I can water every Tuesday for about six hours. Or I can water with a soaker hose every night for about 6 hours. I have a special method of soakering which provides a very deep moistening without cutting off all the air in the ground. I set the faucet to run about 1 cup per minute as shown in this picture.

{{gwi:87619}}

Obviously I have to take off the nozzle before connecting the hose, but that illustrates the flow I put on. That goes onto about 75 feet of soaker hose so it really is a very slow watering. I leave it on for days at a time (don't tell anyone).

Those are my before pictures. I'll check back next spring or earlier if something dramatic happens. Of course this will be fertilized organically, but there may be some atrazine weed control used once per year. For some reason that stuff leaves St Augustine alone but flat murders every other plant around. It's a bad chem but will only be spot sprayed directly where the St Aug is. The rest of the weeds will be the "lawn" for a few years until the St Aug spreads out to take over.

Side notes: the soil is extremely soft when it's moist. I'm not sure how that works when it's been so neglected. Also there are dung beetles in the area which clean up dog poop. I watched my dog poop yesterday at lunch and walked over to pick it up (not). Already there were four dung beetles on it (I have pictures). I marked the spot and when I got home from work, the spot had been cleared away. That is very cool and may be partly responsible for the softness of the soil. There are four species of deer and goats roaming free in the area, so perhaps these dung beetles are cleaning up after those beasts, too. I've always thought dung beetles were species specific such that different beetles were needed for dogs, cats, cattle, goats, etc. Guess I have more to learn about those special creatures.