Hi and welcome to Houston! Creeping fig - evergreen, no flowers (though there's a varigated type.) They get pretty rampant. you'll see them a lot in Houston on the walls. Very easy care. easy to find in landscape places, they're often already kind of large. Grape ivy - sold as a houseplant sometimes. I'll think a little harder to see if there are more flowery options. I'm imagining strong afternoon sun? trumpet creeper's fairly rampant and would probably work. a lot of people hate this plant for this. But it's pretty and you'd have better control over it in a container three floors up. One thing - no matter what, you/DH will have to water it a lot. that's pretty much a given for TX containers.

Don't you think that you'd like to invest in your existing trees? It might be appropriate to bring in two or three ISA Certified Arborists to have a quick look at the condition of your trees and offer estimates for suggested work. Live oaks can respond to something as little as a substantial mulch application! An educated professional will take into account the history of the site, soil conditions, maintenance, etc. I lived in live oak territory long enough to know that you don't have to sit idly by as they decline. Sometimes they are beyond our help, but some can benefit enormously from professional care. click HERE to find Houston area ISA arborists Just use the search for Houston.....there are numerous listings.

In the Austin area, the Live Oaks seem to be the most popular of the oaks, at least in new development areas. I think nurserys overcharge for planting trees. The secret to planting large trees is to rent a hand held demolition hammer from HD. You can have the holes dug in a matter of minutes with no hard back work. Let the tool do the work and just keep shoveling out the broken dirt. Avoid the post hole augers, they will just get stuck and don't handle hard clay as easily.

If there is active disease in the soil, the new grass will die in 2 weeks. Ask me how I know about that. You have to use the corn meal or cracked corn to get out of this situation. As I mentioned cornmeal is a biological control for certain fungal diseases in certain grasses. It seems to work in St Augustine all the time but other grass owners do not get the same success. Corn meal decomposes by a fungal action. Whatever the fungus is attracts a beneficial, predatory fungus to decompose the initial decomposer. That secondary fungus is called Trichoderma (try koh DER mah or trick oh DER mah). The population of the Trichoderma fungus increases on the corn meal. Once it devours the corn meal fungi, all that population of Trichoderma finds other pathogenic fungi in the soil and on the plants. It continues to work until the bad fungus is gone. After the disease is gone, the population of Trichoderma declines but never disappears in the soil. Since this biological control requires at least a minimal population of beneficial fungi in the soil, if you apply a chemical fungicide first, that kills off the beneficial fungi rendering corn meal ineffective as an anti fungal agent. However, corn meal also is a medium grade organic fertilizer. If you apply it at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet, it will supply all the fertilizer you need for many weeks. If you apply corn meal, and you should so as to not waste money on the new sod, then you should not need more fertilizer until the 4th of July. With the 4th of July being the hottest part of the year, you might want to use an organic fertilizer again at that time to take you through to Labor Day. Then you could restart chemical fertilizer if you want to do that. Organic fertilizers take 3 full weeks to show the improvement. This, too, is due to the biological process that have to happen before the grass gets the plant food. I can reconfirm that because I fertilized with alfalfa pellets just 3 weeks ago and "all of a sudden" my lawn looks dark green. It's always interesting to me how sudden the effect appears - just don't expect it to be sudden over night.