Like many, our property was burned in the 2011 Bastrop County Complex wildfires. I remember standing on unsteady legs and blinking at the suddenness with which our circumstances had changed. As the three-year anniversary approaches, it may be instructive to look back over the changes and challenges. . .and God knows there’s been plenty of both.
Looking out over a sea of green today is in poignant contrast to the graveyard greys and blackened matchstick snags left by the fire. Watching nature’s progression is awesome. It may not unfold the same on everyone’s property. The purpose of this post is to share experiences: what happened on my property, what happened on your property, and different ways of dealing with the issues.
On our place, the first emergence of new life was a fungus—a kind of orange slime that grew at the base of many dead trees and climbed the first few feet of trunk–frightening little old ladies and children alike. It was right out of a Dean Koontz sci-fi thriller—like one of those sea creatures that live at the floor of the ocean. In those early days, on barren soft blankets of ash, there was zero evidence of forbs and grasses. . .competition was nil. As sun and rain was added (we received more rain between October 2011 and March 2012 than a typical year), life exploded in all directions; all memory of the orange slime quickly faded.
Our first real plants were Southern Dewberries, Wafer Ash and Buckley’s Yucca. Then came the Rosette Grass, Fall Witch Grass, Spiderworts, the stump and trunk-sprouting (epicormic branching) Post Oaks, the Greenbrier and, yes. . .the nearly indestructible Yaupon Holly. All of this is just a reminder how swiftly nature reclaims the land. Later in the spring of that first year after the fire, stuff began to appear we had never seen in the entire five years prior. Sprinklings of White Prickly Poppies danced along the fence line, Common Sunflowers and great swaths of Rabbit Tobacco seemingly came in overnight.
We recognized early on that, left to its own devices, our land would become unrecognizable and alien to what had been here before—a lush stand of loblolly pines. We cleared the dead trees and planted 2,000 pine seedlings in December of that first year. Just in case, we also planted a semi-circle of thirty-eight other native trees around our house. A long arching stretch of native grasses (Native American Seed’s Recovery Mix) took immediately to the sandy soil and it thrives to this day. Water bars (cut-up telephone poles) were placed along our road to combat erosion. My wife busied herself with sowing wildflower seeds and putting in a new lawn of Buffalo Grass, Blue Gramma and Curley Mesquite. Oh, we had invasives: Sand Burs, Johnson Grass, Doveweed, Snake Cotton, Bull Nettles and Sand Palofox, to name a few.
But the dominant plant that first year—a disturbance-loving interloper—was Pokeweed. These red-stalked, fast-growing toxic squatters with their huge leaf sprays popped up everywhere. The battle was joined as our first summer after the fire was dedicated to hacking down Pokeweed wherever we found it. The second place invasive was yaupon. Yaupon Holly is a continuous guerrilla war we have been fighting since right after the fire, although the fire itself reduced the problem considerably. A 15% solution of Remedy mixed with diesel proved to be the elixir of death. I’d chainsaw the yaupon near ground level and Kathleen followed up with a 3 gallon sprayer. We tried to select the hottest days of summer to do this assassin’s work.
As the grasses matured and the wildflowers multiplied in the generous spring rains, we noticed the wildlife also changed. It started on a small scale. With what amounted to an open prairie landscape bordered by burned forest, insects moved in, bringing behind them Eastern Bluebirds, Scissor-tailed Flycatchers and Carolina Wrens. A Roadrunner or two haunted the tall grasses. Seed-eaters showed up too: Goldfinches, Mourning Doves, Brown-headed Cowbirds—none of these species had we seen before the fire. Now, seemingly everywhere, we see flocks of small birds like packs of cards thrown up in the air. A kaleidoscope of new butterflies hover over our new wildflowers. Stripped lizards, Squirrels, Eastern Cottontails and Red-Tailed Hawks complete the revised food chain. No deer (no cover). We also lost our opossums and skunks along with the forest.
Year two took a different tack. Many of the same forbs and grasses returned but this time a different dominant species appeared, and it was formidable. Texas Snakeweed, AKA Texas Broomweed (Guttierrezia texana. Astor family). Nasty sticky leaves, pungent, toxic to livestock. Little yellow daisy-like flowers—and its perennial! Over the course of the summer, it covered my entire property, as it did the surrounding properties. The problem? It grows to 4 to 5 feet tall and smothers pine seedlings (and everything else), then leaves a woody grey skeleton that persists for seasons to follow. This was full-time work, thrashing through the tangle, pulling this invader up by the roots in a desperate attempt to provide an opening for sunlight and rain to reach my budding pine forest. I lost some seedlings to the Broomweed over the summer and fall.
Somewhere along the way we were inundated by mice. . .all kinds of mice. . .Silky Pocket Mice, Texas Field Mice, Striped Field Mice—you name it. Judging from discussions with neighbors, this was an epidemic in our area. Everyone had them. These, to my knowledge, did not threaten our seedlings, but they did manage to take over our house and property, making nests in our back porch furniture cushions, invading the interior of our cars, chewing through a fuel line (a nest was removed from the blower motor on one of our vehicles) and raiding our birdseed stocks. . . they drove Kathleen crazy. We cycled through the typical hierarchy of Home Depot remedies—with no success—eventually hiring commercial pest control services (a contract which continues to this day). We did eliminate the pests from around the house, but field mice still live on the property, a population now managed by Road Runners, Red-Tailed Hawks and other predators.
The fields of Broomweed turned bleak and withered as everything was given up to the winter. Wintertime brought a new and unexpected troublemaker: Leafcutter Ants. As the vegetation died back, cold temperatures and lack of green plants forced daytime foraging—great serpentine queues of leafcutters began destroying pine seedlings. They could strip a seedling in minutes, even clipping stems at the ground level; these ancient insects wiped out an acre of seedlings in a matter of weeks. We were dumfounded! After finding the huge, sprawling central nest, I applied over 12 one-quart containers of Amdro Ant Block. Within about 3 weeks, the activity ceased. The ants had, no doubt, moved their nest to more hospitable surroundings—someone else’s property. You see, leafcutters are nearly indestructible; you don’t kill them, the most you can hope for is to force them to move their nest.
As springtime unfolded a new infestation appeared. . .Pocket Gophers. Fortunately, these solitary miners rarely work together but, judging from the pock-marked landscape of tunnels and mounds, our property attracted way more individuals than we wanted. Wildflowers, stands of native grasses and pine seedlings are all fair game, as these pests work from under the sand, eating the roots and seldom showing themselves above ground. Solutions? We’ve got none! Research showed that, again, professional pest control is the best bet. Given the immensity of the problem, and the expense, we just decided to to coexist with the bandits for a season. They seem to not be as plentiful now. . .not sure why. Any success stories managing these critters? Post your comments and share what you know.
So here we are, in mid-summer, 2014. . .coming up on three years after the fire. I estimate the success rate with our original planting of seedlings to be somewhere north of 60%. The high temperatures got some of them, the lack of water probably claimed others, encroaching Broomweed smothered others. The Leafcutter Ants and gophers didn’t help. It’s tough growing a new pine forest! Still, some are strong and four feet high, while others are smaller but healthy, and still others—those which bounced back after being clipped by the leafcutters—are alive but set back by a year or more. I spend almost every free day out on the property, clearing our new crop of Texas Broomweed from around the seedlings (this year, I started early with a hoe!). My hope is that I can make it around to all the seedlings before the Broomweed completely overpowers them. It’ll be close. Other native trees (Summac, Wax Myrtles, Texas Persimmon, Cedar Elms, Texas Redbuds, Dessert Willows, Texas Mountain Laurel and Burr Oaks) have sustained casualties; however, on balance most of them are thriving after two years in the ground and generous watering regimens. Native grasses (Little Bluestem, Green Sprangletop, Love Sandgrass, Sideoats Gramma and others) are well established and doing well, while our attempts at native lawn grass remains a work in progress, with the gophers as the prime antagonists.
Recent grants from National Fish and Wildlife have loosed contractors to do erosion control work in our area. This entails scraping the lowest parts of ditches clean of vegetation, laying great coiled lengths of netted straw (erosion control barriers) near culverts along county roadsides, and hydro-mulching (hopefully native) grasses over the bare soil. They also placed large rocks at either end of culverts that empty onto private property, as water diversions against any future El Nino events. Bastrop County has also given the green light to Go-Green, the private company contracted to remove dead pine trees from private and public lands for conversion into bio-fuel pellets, at no cost to residents. We had our dead trees shredded by a private for-profit company in 2012, so this new endeavor will not help on our property, but should prove valuable to other property owners who waited. Would love to hear from those of you who engage these services.
Of our neighbors who remained with their property after the fire, apparently very few are making an effort to restore the original habitat. A bordering property across our road planted palm trees (as in hotel-quality artwork). Re-planted pine seedling acreage nearby has been completely lost to Broomweed; others have shredded their dead trees without replanting any seedlings (Tree Folks will do it for free!). Is there some redeeming value to Texas Broomweed and yaupon that I overlooked? And one neighbor cleared his property and planted only seven adolescent loblolly saplings on five acres—presumably the East Texas species not native to the Lost Pines area. Rots of Ruck with that. A decade from now, I fear the Lost Pines may truly be lost; at least if my neighbors must save it. Recovery, if it comes, will not be by the hand of landowners. Blame, like water, levels out. . . if you want it bad, you get it bad! Thank God for county government and other resource-minded agencies. Would love to hear other stories—both successes and failures—from your property.