Need tree suggestions! ;-)

In the front of my house, I have a multi-trunk yaupon that produces millions of red berries. Several times a year, the birds hit them and then I have about 3 hours of cleaning up of the piles of red excrement that the birds leave in the pool, on the cushions and on my deck! So...I borrowed my mom's chain saw and tomorrow that tree (about 20 feel high!) will be history! What should I plant that is fast growing (hey...I'm almost 60 so don't want it to reach maturity when I'm dead!), does NOT produce anything messy, and will "go with" my house style (modern)?

Here are the other trees in the front:

This morning while cleaning the pool, I realized that I did't add this: the birds that come to the tree is a FLOCK of birds...and they totally ruined a set of lawn furniture cushions because they poop out the red berries, and they stain. When they hit, there are about 12 plops of poop per 16inch tile! No suggestions yet...are all of you bird lovers? I am too, but I can't do all this replacement on a retirement salary, which I'll be living on soon! ;-)

Connie,
You sure aren't getting many suggestions. I'm afraid, being from the North my whole life, I'm no help on trees for zones higher than 5. But I can surely relate to not wanting red bird poop all over my home. Hope you get some help from someone else soon.

Not from TX myself, either - but I'll throw some names out just to prime the pump.

**Crape myrtle grows quick, tolerates your heat, comes in a zillion colors - and doesn't have fruit for birds.

**Live oak has acorns, but birds won't take many of them.

**There's a number of the Sophora that live down your way - colorful in flower, members of Fabaceae - which won't be bird food, either.

OK, the heat's got to me. Giving it a rest...

VV suggested Crepe Myrtle. I concur. Natchez would be a really good one I think. Grows very fast, white flowers (very slight fragrance) go with about anything and the mottled bark on older trees is beautiful.

Just looked at the pic. :-P Wow. You sure you can't sell that sucker to someone? I wish I had it.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I did consider all, then decided on the live oak, since my other trees are red oak and shed their leaves (messy, too!). I found them today at HEB (yes, I'm scared) for 39.99 ,,,regularly 75.00, and as you can see by the pic, it's a large size (about 12 feet at this time).

And here it is closeup...very healthy, as you can see.

Connie that's beautiful. Great choice. I would have suggested Live Oak being the resident Oak nerd here. I didn't know you could find them that large. Wow.

Great choice! I see now its in a pot, I'd give it plenty of room to grow! : )

This message was edited Jul 19, 2010 7:34 PM

Size: yep, they were large for that price! I'm going to dig the hole twice as deep and 3x as wide and backfill with good dirt, as my soil is caliche (mostly).