We got a good taste of Central Texas weather last night.  A huge thunderstorm came out of the northwest about 9:30, carrying baseball sized hail, 60 MPH winds, heavy rain, and some reported funnel clouds (although thankfully no tornadoes touched down).  We were fortunate enough not to get any of the big hail, but we got plenty of rain and the wind did some damage.  It tore shingles from the house, the garage, and the pool house, scattered debris all over the yard, and tore a foot-thick limb from one of our oak trees.  That broken branch made up about a third of the tree’s upper canopy.  The image above shows the tree from the front, where you can see the hole that’s left in the tree’s canopy.  The image below is from the back, where you get a better idea of the size of the limb.

All told, we were fortunate.  At least a half dozen large trees in the neighborhood simply fell over in the wind.  That’s not surprising, as the bedrock in some places is just a few feet under the soil.  Most trees can’t sink a tap root in this ground.  Instead, many small shallow roots spread out over a large area.  It’s stable enough in normal conditions, but sustained 60 MPH winds with higher gusts will rip a tree right out of the ground.  One of our neighbors had to start the chainsaw at 6:30 this morning to clear a path out of his driveway.  I, too, got to start the chainsaw (as I’m fond of saying, “any day you get to start the chainsaw is a good day”).  The larger pieces are now a pile of firewood, and the smaller limbs are ready for the mulcher.

As part of our landscaping plan, we’re creating beds in the front of the house to get the grass away from the building.  This weekend’s project is to prepare the grassy area between the house and the sidewalk.  I actually took this picture a couple of months ago after I’d torn out the overgrown bushes next to the house.  I then used a tiller to plow the grass under, but got stopped in my tracks by over a month of heavy rains.  Tilling, of course, didn’t kill the grass.  On the contrary, it loosened the soil so that grass and weeds could grow much better.  Today I got the tiller out and plowed the (much thicker and greener) grass under again, and then added three yards of compost to the soil.  Tomorrow I’ll till the compost into the soil and level the ground (sloping it away from the house), and start laying mulch to prevent grass and weeds from coming back.  We probably won’t plant anything until the fall, as it’s coming on to the hot and dry season here when the plants that were so green in the spring shrivel up and die for lack of water.  Running a tiller is work, especially when I have to stop every minute or so to remove a rock.  Between today and the first time I tilled this area, I’ve pulled three trailer loads of rocks from that area.  When I go to plant trees, I’m hiring a backhoe.

It’s fawning season (or is that calving season?) for the neighborhood deer.  Last week my neighbor came home to find a doe with a new fawn in his yard.  He got some video footage of the fawn’s first steps.  A couple of days later I scared a very young fawn with the lawn mower.  This morning on the way to work, I saw a doe and new fawn in my other neighbor’s yard, and let Debra know.  She went over with the camera and got the picture to the left.  Debra actually found two fawns.  One was either stillborn or died shortly after birth (the one in the picture is the live one).  Twins?  Probably, as multiple births aren’t uncommon with our neighborhood deer.

The deer are a mixed blessing.  I like having wildlife in the neighborhood (we also have opossums, raccoons, armadillo, snakes, lizards, tarantulas, and roadrunners), but the deer eat most ornamental plants, and almost all of the food plants.  Some of our neighbors set out deer corn for them, which I find obnoxious.  Fortunately, nobody does that for long–feeding a herd of 25 deer can get rather expensive.