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Garden journal entry |
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Surveying the scene, days after the freeze ended |
March 20, 2021. Everything is bigger in Texas. So when a record cold snap hits, it may not reach temperatures nearly as cold as those further north – but you can be assured that it will cause bigger chaos! And so it happened, about a month ago, that a stretch of six days of freezing temperatures, with lows dipping down to 12°F and staying there for much longer than the usual cold snaps the Gulf Coast climate throws at us, caused widespread power and water outages, with burst pipes and busted utility systems everywhere. For a couple of weeks, all the focus was on getting power and water back, and trying to find food staples on the marauded grocery store shelves – but when everyday life returned to mostly normal, attentions turned to the outdoor landscape. And boy, was it ever ravaged! Faithful readers may remember my post about the January 2018 freeze, which was also quite destructive for gardeners, and billed as a freak once-in-a-generation event. Well, let's just say that January was positively mild compared to last month's arctic dip. Many plants that breezed through winter 2018 with no or minimal damage are definitely dead this time around. It's still to early to compile a full list of the survivors and the deceased; the picture here of the immediate aftermath still showed some hopeful green colors on the olive tree (left) and satsuma orange (right), but in the weeks since then the prognosis for those has turned dire (and satsumas are supposed to be among the hardiest citrus). As I reach conclusions on individual plants, I'll mark my plant portraits with  badges, to complement the ones I used for 2018. Already on the pushing up the daisies list: Eucalypus cinerea and citriodora; the former had survived the earlier freeze, while the latter was planted later but had zoomed up to become the tallest living thing in our section of the neighborhood. Both met with a chainsaw today. I'm still holding out hope for many others, but I'm pretty sure I'll be hitting the nurseries to fill many empty spots this year! |
Last modified:
September 09, 2009
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