"Its Genetics . . ."

Thought I was gonna write about hair color or skin color or eye color. Nope it is about our two Shumard Oak trees. Shumard's are red oak trees, that is when sawn up the wood has a red tinge to it. In the family of oaks it is a relatively fast growing oak tree. So a Live Oak it is not, Shumard's tends to shoot up.

We have two of them in the front yard planted by the landscaper for the house builder. They were about four inches in diameter and maybe 20 feet tall back in August 2002. They are now about a foot in diameter and upwards of 30 feet plus in height. They are beginning to mature. There roots are beginning to come up as with all oak trees.

But about the genetics. The tree on the left side of the yard loses its leaves first in the late fall and gains them back, first, in the early spring. The tree on the right, slightly bigger (better soil), loses its leaves at least two weeks after the other tree and puts on leaves at least two weeks after the other tree. Both trees benefit from the fertilizer spread for the lawn.

The only explanation is the genetics. While each is definitely a Shumard or Texas oak, they are not from the same parent tree. Not that it makes any difference, they are just slightly different.

In the North side yard, we had several Hackberry trees. They have been cut down. But next to one of the Hackberry stumps is a volunteer Shumard Red oak. It is already about two inches across and is over 12 feet tall. It came up from an acorn but not an acorn from our front oaks, just a acorn from somewhere in the local area.

We also have a yard full of Post Oaks out back. They are even slower growers than Live oaks and rarely reach the size of either the Shumard or the Live oaks. And they are cantankerous. If you build a dog run around one, the dog running around will kill it. We have had one on the North side yard bloom in the spring, start to put out leaves and died. Fortunately, we have one survivor over there and it has spawn a little one. That is about two and half feet tall and I can assure you it is four years old. It is in very rich area, gets lots of water, etc.. They are just slow growers.

One of our older Post oaks out back is about two feet in diameter, has been in trouble but has been treated. It seems to be doing okay. We estimate it to be at least a 100 years old. We refer to it as "old tree." It supports several bird feeds that are liberally used by the birds, squirrels and deer.

Any rate it is Spring and everything is putting out new leaves, very green and the weather is mild. The Peach trees have fruit all over them. I hope a freeze does not come along and kill all the fruit or a hale storm. We seem to get fruit once every four or five years.