You are in a position sort of like planting pine forests back east. The seedlings are planted in winter and left to the elements. Which usually smiles on them and they grow into trees. Except where you're at, the weather seldom smiles on tree seedlings. So its sort of plant and take your chances. Where I am, only about 1 year out of 3 or 4 is condusive to natural seedling establishment. The only other thing that comes to mind is if you could change the topography slightly so as to channel or retain more run-off rain water toward areas where you are planting the trees. Maybe a shallow ditch or a terrace or some such. This might give them the little extra they need to survive.

Just finished looking a ALL the pictures and enjoyed each and every one!!!! I did the slide show, but probably should have put more seconds in between. I so enjoyed the one picture of the rocks. The suttle shades of color were amazing. I can see that you are very much newly weds! LOL Makes me wonder where the spark went from my 46 + years of marriage. I think there is a tiny flame still flickering somewhere. LOL Connie

Neil, Those look like Acer nigrum leaves (Black Maple). I have some wild ones on my property. Acer nigrum is a sub-species sugar maple found in the mid-west and south. It can be tapped for sugar just like a regular Sugar Maple. Its called Black Maple becaue the trunk and limbs become a dark charcoal-brown color as they age. The leaves don't have as many pointy serrations as a Sugar Maple leaf, and the tips tend to turn down, almost giving it a "droopy" effect. Very nice tree! K4

PushCoGrow, I hope it is like last fall too. Last fall was wonderful. Since we're hoping for a repeat, it probably won't happen. Our weather is so inconsistent. Ezzirah, I'd never call you crazy. Experimentation is fun and is a great way to learn. You never know whether something will work or not until you try it. I do lots of experimentation. I always wondered, for example, if I could get tomatoes and peppers in the winter from plants in containers if I dragged them into the garage on cold nights. So I tried it and I did harvest peppers and tomatoes even in December and January. Before I did it, I would have thought it was not possible because of the cold nighttime temperatures, but in that year the outdoor air temperatures dropped into the upper teens before the plants finallly suffered freeze damage in the well-insulated but unheated garage. Who would have thought they'd last that long in there? Even after the damage to the plants occurred, they resumed growing, blooming and setting fruit. Once it was that cold, though, and the number of hours of sunlight daily were so short, peppers and tomatoes grew very slowly and took forever to ripen. Now, whether anyone would think a cold-weather tomato or pepper has the flavor to make it worth the bother is a different issue. However, I learned it is possible to produce them. I've got all kinds of stuff in the ground for winter, and am getting ready to set up the greenhouse for cold-weather growing. I've got tons of seedlings in flats ready for the greenhouse experiments. I'm just waiting for cooler weather to arrive to stay. Often we're still having daytime highs in the 90s here in our county until Halloween, so I haven't been in a hurry to put anything in the greenhouse until that sort of heat truly has ended for this year. This week the greenhouse, even with 50% shadecloth has been in the upper 90s and the 100s. I'm going to grow lettuce in a variety of ways to see which gives the best cool-season performance: in the ground in the garden unprotected, in the ground in the garden under floating row covers, in containers outside under floating row cover, in containers outside unprotected, in containers on the sunporch, and in containers in the greenhouse. I suspect the cats will nibble the lettuce in containers on the sunporch, so it may be more for them than for us. In rainy and cold weather, the cats practically live on the sunporch, venturing outdoors for brief periods only and spending an inordinate amount of time sleeping on the sunporch. In the big garden, birds usually eat unprotected lettuce in the ground in spring---I want to see if they'll do it in fall and winter. I have tried to trick them by planting the fall lettuce in rows in between rows of taller southern peas and bush beans. So far it is working as the taller plants are hiding the lettuce from the birds. Or, maybe the birds are so happily consuming grasshoppers that they aren't in the mood to eat lettuce yet. About the only thing I've learned about purple sprouting broccoli so far is that the grasshoppers prefer it to anything else I have planted. They haven't touched the Packman or Romanesco Broccoli, but have completely destroyed 1/3 of the Purple Sprouting Broccoli, so now I have it under row covers. I do have tons of grasshoppers still. If there was only a hopper or two around, I don't know that they'd hurt it that much, but we still have hundreds of hoppers per acre. Susan, I am not ready for cold weather, so I hope it doesn't happen. If it happens, I suppose we'll deal with it. I'll be able to keep the cool-season stuff going for months yet with the protection of a little row cover fabric, but the tomatoes and peppers still are covered with fruit in various sizes and stages of development and I'd love to see them have a chance to ripen in warmer temperatures. Nothing surprises me here. Our first year here we had a hard freeze around September 29th, but I put up temporary plastic tunnels over the tomato bed and got those plants through the first two cold nights with minimal damage and they then produced for another few weeks. I prefer the years when the first cold temps don't arrive until December to the ones where the cold temps hit in late September or early October, but we'll take whatever we get. I loved last winter too, even though the lack of cold had me fearing a hot, dry summer....which is what we got. We barely had any cold weather down here and I put tomato plants in unmovable outdoor containers in February because I was confident enough to think I could cover them up if needed to protect them from freezing on the rare cold night, which is exactly what happened. Usually I put them in smaller, movable containers. I also put tomato plants in the ground the first week in March, which isn't possible most winters. Since we'd love a mild winter, we probably won't get one. Have you noticed how seldom we actually get the kind of weather we're hoping to have? Dawn