When I wrote about my “reforesting” project a couple weeks ago I had several requests for photos. I agree it was a little hard to paint a picture just with words. The photo above shows the middle part of the area that the previous owner cleared for a horse pasture. It’s about a 100 feet wide. You can see the forest on either side of it.

I had an opportunity to get twenty trees at a very reasonable price and I am putting them all in this space. Twenty trees is hardly a forest but if these work out I will add some different kinds in later.

On the far side of the trees in the picture the soil is thinner, and the grass is shorter. This is the area that appears desert-like. There is cactus mixed in with the grass in some places.

Some junipers are popping up as well as a few small mesquite trees, many of them scarred up by encounters with deer antlers like the one at the left. This one is only about four feet tall but there are a few larger ones too. This is the one of the most mutilated ones. Most people discourage junipers and especially mesquite. I am going to leave both species however; at least until some hardwoods are established.

At the right you see one of the twenty oak trees that I am planting. This one is a bur oak. The top of it looks to have been bitten off, probably by a deer. According to the books, bur oaks are native to the region but I have not actually seen any. I have seen them about 100 miles to the east however.

The other type of tree I am planting is Quercus polymorpha, sometimes called Mexican live oak. They are only partially evergreen in our area. They have lost most of their leaves and the remaining ones are tinged with brown. The bur oaks are completely deciduous, so they have no leaves at all right now.

I’ve enclosed all of the trees I am planting with wire cages and placed stakes to keep the cages in place. It’s not that they have done anything wrong; it’s for their own protection. Even so the deer have uprooted two of them already. I repotted them and put them in the greenhouse we have on another part of the property. It’s hard to tell if they are still alive, but the root ball was still moist when I found them.

Below is a closeup of some of the prairie grass. There are different types of grass but the one I like best has a golden color and big seedheads. I don’t know for sure what it is. It is a bunchgrass, which means that it does not spread laterally. It reminds me of a type of grass that a friend once gave me called “sandhill lovegrass.” You can also notice that the ground has some pretty good size rocks in it.

We have such dry weather lately that there have been a lot of priarie fires in the area. It’s scary to think of. Actually if we get a some wetter weather in the spring I may burn some of this grass anyway. It’s one of the healthiest things to do with it.

The final picture shows the lowest part of the cleared area. It has more trees and also quite a few smaller trees that seem to be sprouting from the roots of the cleared trees.