Limestone is a major feature of the landscape in the southern and eastern half of Texas; the further north and west you go the higher elevation and you're into land that wasn't under the Gulf for millions of years. In the limestone region there are lots of areas where the coral beds formed and are more durable than limestone, so the many mesas that are simply less eroded parts of the landscape (and the reason "Hill Country" has hills).

Dorothy, we're lucky when we have neighbors who don't make ugly messes of their property. The wooded lot across from me was "cleaned up" 18 months ago and now it's an open sward that is mowed quarterly. The green has returned, but not all of the wildlife.

Fires are regulated down here as regulated by counties and announced by the weather folks. I have a burning barrel that is used every six months only after we've had a substantial rain (now would be good, if I had anything to discard that I don't want to throw in a public recycle bin or landfill.)

Jon, that cairn where your water comes from looks lovely. I enjoy links to maps and photos of places. When I was a child we had a pump for water from the lake where we had a cabin. That lake is the water supply for the city of Bellingham also. Our original cabin and a couple of neighboring houses were washed away in the 1980s in a mud slide after a neighbor across the road did an illegal logging operation up the hill from our houses. She was a nasty neighbor, and was sued, but I don't know the outcome of that. She built her house by acting as general contractor and subsequently cheated every sub-contractor who did work on her house and they all had liens against her so winning a lawsuit meant you stood in line waiting to be paid. Our property was in a small cluster of little modest cabins on wooded lots along the shore, now it's all high-end expensive homes. They must still get water from the lake but now have septic tanks (we had an outhouse).