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baymule
Garden Master
Oh yes, I very well know and understand how important trees are. Their shade is far more cooling and refreshing than the shade, say, of a barn or other man made structure.In summers I use the trees around my home I planted to shade the house to keep cool. I rarely need to use the air conditioner. Only if the temps reach 100F 3 or more days in a row. Tree aspirate a fine mist in hot weather to keep the temperature cooler .
You might not know that trees play a crucial role in combating urban heat. Trees cool the area beneath their canopy by an impressive 20–45 degrees Fahrenheit via shade and a natural form of cooling called “evapotranspiration” that takes place when trees exchange moisture with the air around them.
When I made the offer on this place, the double wide was ringed with oak trees, a shady oasis. Before we closed, they were dead. 7 big old oak trees were dead and had to come down. There is one left. One. On the south side of me, was Forest, it has been clear cut. All gone.
The trees in my yard as well as many, many others, were damaged by the snow and freeze event in February 2021. Followed by a drought in summer of 2022, trees all over East Texas were dead or dying.
I’m just now starting to plant trees. @fuzzi sent me flowers to go in my flower graveyard. LOL. I put them in a pot until I get grass and weeds dug out of the extension I put on my flower graveyard (it keeps the sheep from eating them when I let them graze the yard) I also have 2 small redbud trees to plant in the front yard, in the dubious care of the flower graveyard.
Along the fence in the back yard, on the not my side of the fence, are a few young trees. The man running the shear that cut all the trees, thoughtfully left them to provide future shade. A large oak tree in the middle of the back pasture was blown down by a storm last summer. My son has piled more “clean up” on it to be burned some day. 2 trees in the middle pasture, up front, blew down across the driveway in another storm and took out both fences on either side of the driveway.
I will plant more trees, giving careful consideration of where infrastructure will go, how fields will be cross fenced and so on.
Go back to page one, I started off this journal with the dead trees. Sad, they were big and beautiful.