We’ve reached a really neat pattern with fall colors.
I drove down to Matagorda last weekend and was struck, as I always am, by the splash of color from tallow trees.
There’s something truly magnificent about the different colors these natives to eastern China flash.
I became acquainted with the tallow tree in Kerrville, where they’re not as profuse as they are down here.
Kerrville was hit hard by oak wilt in the 1980s.
Vast swaths of live oaks were killed by a disease that’s like hardening of the arteries in humans.
Neighborhoods were devastated by the wilt.
It’s actually heart breaking to think Kerr County has to go through a catastrophic loss of trees from the July floodwaters.
As I mentioned tallows weren’t common in the Hill Country.
But the house I had in Kerrville had one the size of the older tallows you see here.
And its seeds began another tallow in our yard.
During a drought year things get grim in a hurry up there be cause the soil isn’t deep like the coastal plain and things turn brown in a hurry.
So, during this drought, I got to worrying about this tallow sapling.
Our yard already had lost three good-sized trees and I wanted to keep the tallows.
We had a couple of Blackjack oaks in the backyard.
I was told by the county agent the Blackjacks weren’t near as susceptible to wilt like the live oaks.
Nor were the sycamores on one side.
So the tallows were the main trees in the front and I wasn’t let the drought down the young tallow.
So I would water that so-called trash tree almost daily.
People here probably think I was touched. Oh wait, too late.
It lived, and I go by that property whenever I go to visit my son and his family.
The older tree stands alone – it once shaded a house that’s long gone.
The younger is easily over 20 feet tall.
A church bought the property in the early 90s. They razed the cinder block house but kept all the trees.
The trees produced such a swirl of colors in the fall – like they do now.
We’ve lived here for 18 years now and I’ve seen several tallow saplings prosper.
Without me rushing out with a bucket to keep them going.
