Texas Gardening: What IS Texas Pride?, 0 by bettydee

bettydee wrote:
Some people got more than their share of water this year. What Texas needs is more reservoirs and lakes to capture all that water, but they are difficult to put in a state that is either too flat or too porous. I think it is time to rethink the need for a lawn and encourage the use of cisterns. Mind you, I said encourage not subsidize (a bugaboo of mine).

Linda, my heart goes out to you. Runaway development is never welcomed except maybe by the seller. Often there is nothing we can do to stop it. Perhaps if the folks in your town got together to protest, you could get some concessions. In the past, if one didn't like the population growth, one could always head west, but that's crowded too. So we are moving into areas "Where no man has gone before." We get a lot of people from Houston here in Fayette County. Land prices in the Round Top area have gone through the roof because of the influx of people. Our ranch is worth over 4 times what we paid for it 8 years ago, maybe more because we have frontage on the Colorado. When our new hospital was built two years ago, a 456 acre ranch across the highway from the hospital went up for sale. The initial asking price was $4.5 mil. When it didn't sell, the owners retained a real estate agency in Houston and raised the asking price to $10.5 mil. It hasn't sold yet, but it will. The ranch is located outside of La Grange so city restrictions don't apply. The county only one building restriction — regarding disposal of sewerage. A disaster waiting to happen. :-(

This is a photo of one of the pastures across the creek and near the woods. We have at least 100 live oaks that are 200 years old or older with circumferences of over 25 feet.