The oaks are pretty well leafed out again. I so see lots of dead secondary branches though, so I guess I'll be cleaning up all summer. The hickories are still not doing really well. They are leafing out, starting at the bottom and working their way up. Hopefully they will be fine. My poor crape myrtles are badly damaged though. They are starting to leaf out along the main trunk, but it looks like at least 80% of the smaller branches are dead. I hate the look of pruned crape myrtle, but I don't have much choice at this point. It is taking a lot of time, but I am pruning one branch at a time cutting only what has to be cut so they keep more of a natural look to them. Gardenias had to be pruned back nearly to the ground to get back to live growth. Several ornamental vines are dead. My garden really got hit hard. Next winter I will be ready with sprinklers on all beds so I can coat the plants in ice if we are going to get another cold snap. The plants that I ran the sprinklers on came through the cold snap undamaged.....even hosta leaves were undamaged!! Of course I can't do that for the large trees, but maybe more of my garden can remain undamaged.

sorry, late responce. weather has been fairly regular. dry hot summer, 65 lowes 108 highs. we're about to the end of summer, but the tree is doing well. it has not grown very much from the second spring flush, but ive been dealing with the winds from the N/W. always steady. more so in the evenings. I can't stand a crooked, or wind pushed over tree. I really like the tree though. very healthy looking.

No, that's ridiculous. Maybe if your whole town dumped their leaves in this one half acre. In theory, you could make a big enough leaf pile on top of a woodland plant to smother it out, but even then I'd be doubtful because the wind will distribute leaves throughout the winter.

Houston, TX A year after we planted the tree the bark started looking that way. When you touched the bark it moved like the bark was loose from the tree. We treated it with fungicide for the whole summer. It's dropping at least 25-30 leaves a day so by now it has lost 10 to 20 percent so far. It is putting on new growth but it should not be letting go of this springs leaves. We have had a wet spring (2017) and the tree was damaged last spring (2016) by a bad storm. That storm literally moved the tree and sucked its root system out of the ground. The trunk itself was loose in the dirt. But we had no problems after, the tree rerooted itself and we straightened it back up.