Monday, January 18, 2010

My Poor Lilacs

For some reason, I've been unaware of the last two major snowstorms until they actually hit. Why is that? I wasn't really aware that there was supposed to be a lot of snow until this morning when there was a lot of snow. I thought we were getting just a couple of inches. I think we have somewhere around six inches, but I can't really tell. And it's supposed to snow more today. This wouldn't really be a problem if the snow weren't wet and heavy. Good snowball snow, but not good tree snow. Our yard plants are unhappy and I think we've lost about 30% at least of our lilacs. They snapped and fell over. Sad. Anyway. I took some pictures.

This first one is the tree that lost limbs after the last wet, heavy snowstorm.


It's not a great pictures, but you can see the fallen limb from the last storm in the bottom left corner. Still resting there. And if you look further up, you can see the places where limbs used to be and are no more.

Next we have our backyard. The branches of our maple tree in the backyard are touching the ground. The girls and I played outside in the snow on Thursday and really tromped around the backyard. You can't even tell we'd been there at all.


There are some plants in this world that are overused in landscapes and as houseplants. And I don't like those plants. But neither can I wish them dead. I did try to kill some pothos plants through neglect while on my mission, but I couldn't even bring myself to withhold water and ended up rescuing the wretched things. They're hard to kill anyway, which is why they're a popular houseplant. My least favorite landscape plant is juniper bushes, and we don't have any of those, thank heavens. But we do have an arborvitae, which is right up there. And it's not even a nice-looking arborvitae. It's missing growth on the bottom three feet and just looks scrawny and untended. It's on my list of plants that need to go. I tell myself it's because it's sickly, but it's really because I don't like it. And the very admission of such a thing just filled my soul with a deep and abiding guilt. But even my stone-cold heart was touched by the sight of my poor arborvitae looking like this:


That's it just to the left of the fence. Usually it's tall and straight. But the weight of the snow has bent it over. It's clearly not suited for this kind of weather (and, may I add, this climate zone?) and needs to be removed. But I just feel bad for it today. You can't see the bottom part of it because my rhododendron (which was relieved of 60% of it's mass by me in the fall) is obscuring it.

Speaking of my rhodie: I was not a fan at all when we bought the house. Rhododendron's need maintenance. If they're not near the house, it's not really a big deal if you don't prune and maintain them, but if they're located near the house, they really ought to be taken care of. Our rhododendron was all the way up to our roof and taking over the walkway. Well, let's just say I took out my wrath on that shrub. It's now a lovely little thing that only goes up to my kitchen window. Now I can see out the window. I'm not expecting it will flower much this year and I won't be overly surprised should it not survive. I read somewhere that when pruning rhodies aggressively you should never prune back more than 30% in a given year and that 50% is the most a plant like that can handle. I did way more than 50% removal on that thing. We'll see how it goes.

This wasn't really meant as a description of my rhodie, but there's a reason I bring it up. I'm actually fond of the thing now since it's been pruned and looks respectable, but more so because the birds like it. And why do the birds like it? Because the girls and I made them peanut butter seed pinecones. And just this past Saturdays I bought them a seed cake and seed cake holder. Now it's like a full-on party in my rhododendron. We had birds today that I'd never seen before when it was just the pinecones. The ones today have yellow and orange bellies.


This little guy is the kind I get the most of. I guess I need to get a bird identification book and figure out what all my little friends are. Whatever they are, I noticed that the cardinals and blue jays that live in my yard aren't interested in my seed cake and that's probably a good thing. They're aggressive. Besides which, I bought a bird house for them. And put it on the lilacs so I could watch them out the other kitchen window.

Which brings us to my lilacs. Sigh. I like lilacs. I think they're beautiful and I love the smell of them in the spring. My only real issue with lilacs is that they're a one-and-done kind of plant. Their foliage isn't that impressive and they're not interesting in the winter. They're only magnificent in the spring. There are, however, many many many lilacs in my yard. Or were. You see, I didn't know this before, but lilac wood is not very strong. Or so I'm learning. I had to prune back the lilacs when we first moved in because they were making the steps difficult to climb up from the driveway. And they looked great after I did that. A couple of months ago I grabbed one of the trunks as I slipped and wrenched the whole thing out of the ground. Which wasn't a huge loss since it was a trunk I'd been debating removing anyway. And it looked nicer. But I lost another one just a month ago in the last big, wet snowstorm because I touched it and it feel out of the ground. And then today we lost some more.


The one in the foreground is the one that had housed my birdhouse and it just snapped in two. I'm a little worried that the additional weight of the birdhouse is what did it in. You can see the birdhouse buried in the snow. Sigh. Also, there are the ones that fell down the hill.


My husband shook some of them off, but I don't know if I want to go shake the rest of them off. That's what killed the one last month. It's kind of discouraging that one of the only plants in the yard that I do want to encourage is the one plant that's determined to die. This picture is also a nice showcase of our Christmas tree, which is still waiting to find it's way to the woodpile in the backyard. Ha!

So that's the scoop here. Looks like the snow stopped for now. Good. I think Princess Pea and I might actually go get some housecleaning done now.