I have over 100 varieties of fruit trees. There is no mess.. I PICK the fruits and we eat them/freeze/can/cook them. A major irritant to me is the wasting of fruit. I see citrus left on trees here until they shrivel and turn leathery-brown. Why? Why not use the fruits, or give them to charity? Grrr.... Figs are not messy-just use the fruits, don't let them get over-ripe and rot. Mulberries are great! I pick fruit daily from mine. Poms are not messy either. Same thing-pick the ripe fruits and there you are! Why grow fruit trees if you don't want to use the fruits? I'm lazy too, but strolling around the property, plucking fruits from trees and popping them into my mouth, is EASY! (VBG) Lisa

RE: "Fortunately, they [oaks] only shed once a year. Not much of a mess" Begs the question "what sheds leaves more than once a year?" Some trees, broadleaf evergreens for example, are constantly shedding a small amount of leaves. But those are hardly messy becuase you can just mulch them with the mower. Live oaks are definitely messy trees. But their shade is nice. Don't collect all of the leaves. Run them over several times with the mower and leave some for mulch. Even better would be composting them for a while first. I've never seen a sugar maple doing well in Texas. You could try a big tooth maple for a shade tree, but it will take many years to get big. If you want something fast for some shade Taxodium (bald cypress, pond cypress, montezuma cypress) are good for Texas. While all are deciduous, no where near as messy as a live oak.

I have a bird feeder on a pole with a baffle to prevent squirrels from getting to the seed. Underneath the feeder are 3' high evergreen shrubs and in front of those various perennials: lantana, plumbago, salvias. And in amongst those, a low bird bath. I keep the whole area heavily mulched. About once a month, I carefully spray round up on the weeds. The round up has never harmed my plants which currently looks jungley and by using round up instead of pulling, the mulch is not disturbed. This has worked for 8 years. In the spring and fall, I mulch again and plant annuals too. Black sunflower seed produces the least amount of weeds. The millet stuff is a nightmare and brings in large, undesirable birds to the feeder.

Glad this surfaced or I would never have seen it - would appreciate suggestions on what to when it comes time for us to sell. We live next door to a messy house. It was a bit tired looking when we moved in but has steadily gone downhill - way down. It's not abandoned, not in foreclosure, we (and another adjacent neighbor) have tried working with the owners to find solutions but have had no success. We've lived here 22 years, the messy owners have been here quite a bit longer than that. They are elderly but that is not the reason for the mess and disrepair and it does not appear financial resources are a problem - money is spent in other areas that are known to us, but not on the home. There is obviously some degree of mental illness, but nothing that would warrant intervention by an agency. The city has known about this forever. Periodically we and the adjacent neighbor have pushed the city to take action and some issues do get addressed, minimally. But the messy neighbor is a retired lawyer and fights the city endlessly on code verbiage, finding other homes with similar 'violations' that have not been cited. As an example, he finds homes with parkway plantings that are technically against city ordinance as evidence that he should not be cited or fined. His example home will have a grass parkway with city planted trees and owner planted flowers in a bed around the trees. Messy neighbor's parkway has no grass, weeds and invasive ivy overgrowing the sidewalk, multiple owner planted trees that create safety issues seeing oncoming traffic on street and sidewalk. The city limbs up the trees when we complain, the owner plants more each spring and it goes round and round. He has the time and mental acuity to fight the city - it costs him nothing and *seems* to be somewhat of a game. The city has other places to spend money and will not push this as a result. There is no doubt in my mind it would cost a fortune, result in very negative press and PR and likely get nowhere if it actually ended up in court. We always thought we'd outlast them, they would move to a condo or retirement home of some sort and new owners would clean things up before we would need/want to sell. But that has not happened and we are planning to market our home in the near future. The housing market is what it is and we'd have to deal with that regardless, but this neighbor adds to the difficulty. Any ideas???