The spring of 1785 proved an exceptionally dry one and he was forced to be absent from home several days, leaving the care of the trees and shrubs to his careless lazy servants. He records that they _said_ that they watered them according to directions, but he seems to doubt it. At all events, "Most of my transplanted trees have a sickly look.--The small Pines in the Wilderness are entirely dead.--The larger ones in the Walks, for the most part appear to be alive (as yet)--almost the whole of the Holly are dead--many of the Ivy, wch. before looked healthy & well seem to be declining--few of the Crab trees had put forth leaves; not a single Ash tree has unfolded its buds; whether owing to the trees declining or any other cause, I know not.... The lime trees, which had some appearance of Budding when I went away, are now withering--and the Horse chestnut & Tree box from Colo. Harry Lee's discover little signs of shooting.--the Hemlock is almost entirely dead, & bereft of their leaves;--and so are the live Oak.--In short half the Trees in the Shrubberies & many in the Walk are dead & declin[in]g." Nevertheless he refused to be discouraged and proceeded to plant forty-eight mahogany tree seeds brought by his nephew, George A. Washington, from the West Indies. He also set out a "Palmetto Royal" in the garden and sowed or planted sandbox trees, palmettos, physic nuts, pride of Chinas, live oaks, accacias, bird peppers, "Caya pepper," privet, guinea grass, and a great variety of Chinese grasses, the names of which, such as _"In che fa," "all san fa" "se lon fa,"_ he gravely set down in his diary. The dry weather continued and presently he notes that all the poplars, black gums and pines, most of the mulberries, all of the crab apples and papaws, most of the hemlock and sassafras, and several of the cedars are dead, while the tops of the live oaks are dead but shoots are coming up from the trunks and roots. The Chinese grasses are in a bad way, and those that have come up are almost entirely destroyed either by insects or drought. None of this grass survived the winter, though he took the trouble to cover it with straw. During the fall of 1785 and spring of 1786 he sowed the lawn with English grass seeds, replaced the dead trees in the serpentine walks and shrubberies, and sent two hundred and fifteen apple trees to his River Plantation. He made the two low mounds already mentioned and planted thereon weeping willows. He set out stocks of imported hawthorns, four yellow jessamines, twenty-five of the Palinurus for hedges, forty-six pistacia nuts and seventy-five pyramidical cypress, which last were brought to him by the botanist Michaux from the King of France. As 1786 was one of the wettest summers ever known, his plants and trees lived better than they had done the preceding year.