A wildfire devastated large swaths of George Bush Park in West Houston a year ago, leaving a wasteland in its wake.
But nature is showing its resilience and has been re-greening the area from the bottom up, aided by much more frequent and abundant precipitation starting in January and through the remainder of the current year, causing the low-lying areas in the reservoir to fill with run-off several times already after heavy rain, including this week.
The grassland and bushes are back as if nothing had happened. The trees that were lost, however, will not be replaced as quickly. What's left of them -- charred skeletons sticking up into the sky -- provide an eerie reminder of the impact of last year's record-setting drought followed by large-scale fires.
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| Regreening of the meadow in the wetlands restoration area, but the trees singed by the wildfire in September 2011 are beyond recuperation |
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| Fungus growing on a charred tree trunk |
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| Landscape along Noble Road Trail inside Barker Reservoir |
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| Fungi at work helping decompose charred tree trunk |
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| Silhouette against evening sky of a burnt tree that remained leafless all summer and will eventually come down in a storm |
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| Orange-colored sunset glow behind a web of branches bare of leaves provides reminder of the bush fire that laid waste to this wooded area of Barker Reservoir a year ago |
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