An icy garden on my 15th blogiversary
I started this blog 15 years ago today, a Valentine’s Day treat to myself as I joined the online gardening community. At first Digging was all about documenting and sharing photos of my Austin cottage garden, which I left behind 13 years ago when we moved to our current house. I still blog to document my garden’s evolution, as well as my visits to gardens and parks around the world, but it’s become so much more than a web-log. Blogging connects me to other gardeners near and far. It’s introduced me to some of my best friends. It’s led to professional opportunities in design, writing, authorship, and photography and inspires me to plan events that bring garden lovers together for fun and education.
What a wonderful world blogging has opened up, and I wouldn’t have stuck with it so long without YOU — you who are reading this; you who’ve commented once or regularly over the years, reminding me there’s someone beyond the glowing screen; you who’ve shared in my enthusiasm for making our yards and cities a more beautiful, welcoming place for ourselves and other creatures. Whether you’ve been along for the ride for 15 years or the 15 seconds it’s taken to read this post, a heartfelt thank you for being here!
Now what’s all this got to do with ice in Texas, you may be wondering? Not a thing. It’s just that this Valentine’s Day blogiversary happens to be the wintriest one I’ve ever experienced as a gardener. It started on Thursday with a cold rain that froze onto tree branches and other foliage. By evening the garden was tinkling and creaking under the weight of the ice.
Trees all over Austin began splitting and dropping huge limbs. On Friday a giant limb fell from one of our recently pruned live oaks onto our neighbor’s lawn — on the second day of their listing their house for sale. Luckily neither it nor the icy weather stopped a flood of prospective buyers from viewing the house, which is already pending — proof yet again that the housing market in Austin is red-hot.
Thank goodness the fallen branch missed the garden, although I fear the bamboo muhlies and Mexican honeysuckle under the tree will be toast anyway.
Native plants like Texas nolina and prickly pear will be OK, although even they might suffer damage and die-back. With a low of 5F and a week of below-freezing temps predicted, not to mention the ice and an upcoming snow, I really have no idea how all my various plants will fare.
Aside from the trees, I’m most concerned for my agaves, like this whale’s tongue, and my pipe-planted (i.e., exposed) toothless sotol (Dasylirion longissimum). Nothing to be done but wait and see.
My deer fencing to prevent antlering damage is still up around certain vulnerable plants, like this ‘Green Goblet’ agave, and it’s hung with little icicles. Funny how garden-angst can go from deer to severe cold in a matter of days. The foxtail fern by the stone steps is a goner for sure. I’m not worried about the sedge though. I assume it will be fine. Don’t prove me wrong, Mother Nature!
The streetside bed is laid low. Rosemary, Jerusalem sage, Mediterranean fan palm, bamboo muhly — these are quite likely goners too. I hope somehow the palm and muhly grasses will survive from the roots.
Ice-coated Salvia greggii — probably tough enough to make it.
I dare not even explore under the trees very long, not with ice still coating heavy branches.
I wonder about birds, lizards, and other wildlife during this icy week. Will they find shelter and food? I’m grateful not to have been able to cut the whole garden back in one go, so there’s still lots of growth to shelter small creatures. I’d only gotten to one section of the garden before the forecast convinced me to stop the cut-back.
The native possumhaw holly (Ilex decidua) is still loaded with frozen berries if any hungry birds come looking.
In the back garden, my ‘Blue Ice’ Arizona cypress (Cupressus arizonica var. glabra) droops morosely over the path. With several inches of snow coming, I worry about more limb breakage. It’s a helpless feeling watching beloved plants tested like this.
Frozen leaves on my biggest Yucca rostrata. I think the yuccas will be OK. They are winter-tough. The ‘Winter Gem’ boxwoods should be OK too, but I do worry about a few new ones I’d just planted elsewhere in the garden.
More limbs down in the lower garden. Will the potted whale’s tongue agave and squid agaves in the Circle Garden make it? I fear that they won’t.
Our ball-moss tree — I mean crape myrtle — is silvered by ice, just like the live oaks beyond. A mound of black plastic, held down by a patio chair, protects the drained fountain from freezing water.
It’s quite a different scene from the balmy nighttime view I shared in my last post.
Goodbye to the ‘Alphonse Karr’ bamboo, I expect, along with a trio of soap aloes (covered by a sheet) that I’ve had for over a decade.
It’ll be a thinner, smaller garden this spring. No lie — it sucks. But that’s the way it goes sometimes. Wherever you are (my Northern Hemisphere readers), I hope your garden is tucked in tight, not to mention yourself, and you’re enjoying some Valentine’s chocolate. I’m off to do the same.
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Digging Deeper
Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!
All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
I can empathize. I’m worried about a live oak branch that touched my roof in the last snow storm. (I had tons of live oak branches break, but none harmed the house.) My understanding is that sometimes when it rains and then freezes this protects plants, but since this extreme cold that will last so very long, I have my doubts. I also have an Asparagus fern that I’ve had for 30 years that is probably a goner even though it’s covered twice.–Not an expensive plant by any means, but it has sentimental value. Hope the majority of your plants surprise you and come back. Will watch your posts for updates. Happy Blogiversary! (And yes, I was a reader of your blog with the cottage garden way-back and loved it.)
A longtime reader! Thanks for sticking with me so long, Laura. 🙂 It’s been an education and an adventure to shift from that sunny flower garden to my current shady foliage garden. And now I’ve been gardening at this house longer than I’ve ever gardened anywhere else. Anyway, here’s hoping more plants than we think will make it through this winter.
Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy 15th Anniversary! What a milestone, made even more memorable (even if not in a good way) by the impending apocalypse. I keep checking the weather forecast for Austin several times a day in hopes it will change…
Thanks, Gerhard. It’s a memorable anniversary, for sure! What a freaky winter this is turning out to be.
Some varieties of rosemary are hardy to zone 7, one zone south of Milwaukee, where we lived for 13 years. It was rumored that you could keep them going in Milwaukee if you sited them properly and gave them protection. I also once dug out some Bermuda infested trailing rosemary here in Austin that was so woody it mighty well have been there last time it got down to 10 or so (in the early 1990s). Certainly that garden had been allowed to grow wild for years. So fingers crossed for the rosemary!
Oh, I hope my rosemary will survive this deep freeze. I wonder if it helps if they’re already used to cold winters, rather than having one sprung on them? If only plants could talk. 🙂 Anyway, my fingers are crossed too!
Happy anniversary Pam and sorry to hear about your weather. We have it too although I feel we dodged the bullet. I’m glad we got mostly snow instead of ice. However, just south of us, in Portland and to the east, there is lots of ice damage. I would guess this is highly unusual for Austin?
Yes, record-breakingly unusual, Phillip. We’re expecting more snow than we’ve gotten in about 60 years, and the coldest temps since the late ’80s — way before I was gardening here. I have no frame of reference to know how my plants will respond to this, which ones will make it and which ones won’t. I’m seeing dollar signs wafting away on a cold wind — ha! I’m glad you’ve gotten insulating snow instead of ice in your PNW garden. I’ve been seeing all the snowy and icy pics of Portland-area gardens on social media. For once we’re having the same weather!
Congrats! 15 years – that’s quite a feat. keep up the good work. The ice though… that’s terrible. Still – maybe it will be interesting to see what is able to make a surprise recovery.
I can only hope, Hans. Thanks for the good wishes!
I can’t even imagine what the icy conditions are like for you and my fellow gardeners in the path of these icy storms. It’s Quebec weather from the region of our cottage temperatures. Not normal at all for Austin.
Yay for a 15th anniversary blog post and another yay for your part in encouraging the varying community of garden bloggers who participate in the Garden Bloggers Fling!
Quebec needs to take this weather back! It definitely doesn’t belong in Austin. 😉 Thanks for the good wishes, Lisa. I’m glad to have met you through the blogging community!
Congrats on fifteen years, Pam, but what an anniversary! I had no idea your conditions in Austin were so extreme. It makes our little west coast three-day freeze look positively tame by comparison. I’ll be think about you and all my Austin garden blogging pals over the next few days, and keeping my fingers crossed for your gardens. And just like any good gardener it’s clear you will mourn your losses then move on to the next phase. It will all be good, eventually.
Thank you, Jane. Power was restored in my neighborhood this morning, after 75 hours out, and we are grateful to have heat and light again. I’ll worry about the garden later.
I kinda hope the birds DON’T find the berries on the Ilex. Some years back we had a freeze then thaw and the berries on a Bay outside my classroom fermented. We had drunk birds crashing into the windows. Don’t know if the Ilex berries would do this, but I. don’t think you want to find out.
Gosh, that hadn’t even crossed my mind. I did see desperate birds eating the berries a few days ago. I was glad my garden had something for them in this bitter cold, even if they did get a little tipsy.
Pam, a HUGE congratulations on 15 years of bringing gardening to life for millions of us though your thoughtful and gorgeous blog. You’ve introduced me to a plethora of plants and design concepts I embrace to this day in my own garden. As for the snow and extreme Texas weather, my heart breaks for you. I know you will persevere but damned, it’s heartbreaking. I hope the thaw is soon and the damage is minimal. We are all cursing the snow and ice as I type this. Hugs my friend, Fingers crossed indeed as Jane says.
Thank you, Tamara! It’s been a bonkers week here in Texas, but hopefully we’re on the downhill side now. I see you’ve been pummeled too. I hope your garden pulls through with minimal damage, but we’ll just keep planting if not, won’t we?
Happy Blog Anniversary! Wow that is something to see in your area! We had snow here few weeks ago. A lot was frozen, but I think it will come back. I know you hate to loose plants to the weather too. It does look pretty though(-:
Thank you, Cindee. The plants have been under ice, snow, and now more ice and snow for a week now, with record low temperatures. I’m not sure what this spring and summer will look like, and I dread to see the damage. But we’ll just have to keep keeping on!
This weather has been so crazy this year. I have been watching in awe from Minnesota because this is weather I associate with our part of the country. While right now it is -15F, we really have not had any ice. And as I read your post, like you, I wondered what will survive. One hopes for the best, right? Fingers crossed.
That’s all we can do now. There will be a major cleanup of destroyed plants come spring. But that’s the nature of gardening — some years you win, others you lose. Just gotta keep planting!
You have certainly perfected the art of blogging in the last 15 years. We (your many readers) appreciate it!
As for the weather, it’s even worst (more ice) here in Fredericksburg. It’s just not fair; we put up with intolerable heat in July and August and still have THIS kind of cold too? Not fair….. just not fair.
I totally agree, Paula — we shouldn’t be subject to BOTH extremes in Texas. What a weird winter. I hope to never see its like again.
Congratulations on a spectacular 15 years of documenting adventures and making gardening friends! Thanks for the images and stories. February always seems to be a tough month in Central Texas. We’re almost out of the woods but then a humdinger of a weather event pops up. I’m waiting (fingers and toes crossed) to see what survives this dip of the Artic blast, too. I barely remember the last record 30 yrs ago, which was just before I got married and started concerning myself with a yard and plants outdoors. It pays sometimes to not be too tidy too early with cleaning up outside. Like you I worried about the critters. And then also I was able to use leaves we had yet to move to a compost pile to make slip-free pathways on some hardscaping in the back yard.
Beverly, I hope your garden is OK, or at least mostly OK after this. I don’t think any gardener in Texas will come through this without at least some plant losses. This was (is still) one for the record books!
Happy 15 year anniversary!
Oh gosh! I did not think you got frosts like this in Austin! Did you know the cold snap was coming? Do you protect your plants from the cold? I hope lots of your plants pull through! Are live oaks prone for branch snapping or is it because you recently pruned them so some branches were more exposed than usual?
Here in London, UK we had a cold snap last week too where we had a -7 degrees Centigrade one night – I didnt have any fleece so my most precious tender plants were brought inside for mini break! And my cyathea that was planted out was wrapped in 2 wooly jumpers and a large coat was buttoned up around it supported by a bamboo cane! 😉 The things we do for our plants! Lets hope it survives! And all the other plants are back outside now as we have a week of above 0 degrees C weather.
This was a record-breaking freeze for most of Texas, both in low temperatures and duration, as well as in snowfall. There’s been nothing close to this since the 1980s. We did know it was coming, and we knew it was going to be bad. But no one warned residents that their power could be shut off for days (to protect the grid for critical infrastructure like hospitals and water treatment plants) during the coldest week on record. Our power was shut off for 75 hours, and our indoor house temperature dropped into the 40sF during those three days. Many others lost both power and water. Because many water treatment plants lost some power anyway, those who do still have water must boil it — assuming they have power to do so — in order to safely drink it. It’s a true disaster for our state.
As for the garden, there is no way to protect it with sheets or blankets from sustained low temperatures like we just had — down to 5F a couple of nights and below freezing for nearly 6 days/nights. Our property (including our house’s footprint) is 1/3 of an acre — probably pretty big by London standards? I brought inside as many potted plants as I could and prayed our house would stay above freezing when we lost power. The tree branches broke simply because of the weight of the ice on them.
I hope never to see a winter like this again. It’s been 30+ years since Austin had a winter even comparable to this. But with climate change, who knows?
Congrats on 15 years! You’ve accomplished much and shared great gardens and inspired all of us gardeners. I sympathize with the ice storms, we had one five years ago and it does some serious damage. Thankfully the garden is resilient. Hope yours recovers and provides new opportunities for you.
Thanks, Karin. I hope so too. 🙂
Congrats on your blogiversary! Thank goodness you decided to start blogging. My world would be a very different place had you not. I can do a little George Bailey and trace back all the things that I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t started blogging and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be blogging if I hadn’t read your blog. Plus no Fling! Anyway…that’s the good. As for the bad, I am so sorry. Your temperatures are just insane. Our own 4-day flirt with winter definitely took a turn yesterday evening as bearable quantities of snow and ice then had a lot of ice heaped on top of it all. It’s a war zone out there right now with crashing as it finally starts to warm. So many trees down and people without power…
Aw, thank you, Loree. I can’t imagine you not blogging, and I’m touched to think my own blog inspired you to start yours. As for this winter, I want it GONE. I am certain you do too. What a roller coaster it’s been for the past week.
These images are incredible, Pam. I’m sorry that this ice storm has proven to be as bad as you’d feared. I nonetheless hope that the garden will be more resilient than you expect. Most importantly, congratulations on 15 years of blogging! You were a trailblazer 15 years ago and I know you’ll continue to be that far into the future. Thanks for all your posts and for all you’ve done to build and support a community of garden bloggers.
Thank you, Kris! 🙂
First, congratulations on your 15th blogversary! I have learned so much from you, so thanks. Second, I’m so glad you visited my garden last October. This freeze rivals the one in December 1983 for duration and low temperatures. I’m afraid most or all the large arborescent palms will be toast, since palms are monocots which die if the one growing meristem on each trunk is killed. I’m also afraid many of my Agaves , Rosemaries, and other things will be gone. It will be a very different garden than the one you saw. All gardens are temporary, but I wish this had happened after I was gone.
Peter, I’m so glad I got to see your garden in its prime last fall. Like you, I’m worried about many mature anchor plants too. We’ll just have to wait and see as the damage reveals itself, and know we’ll clean up and carry on as best we can.
The word ICE puts fear into my gardening heart. I hate that for you. Here we have about 9″ of snow on the ground and it is still snowing like mad. At least I can say no ice. It is good to have this snow with the temps being so low. Single digits with minus wind chill. Brrrrr…. This is one anniversary you won’t forget that is for sure. Congrats on all your postings and all that came of them. I am so happy for you. Cheers and on to another 15 years.
Thank you, Lisa! I’ve really appreciated your regular and cheerful comments over the past 15 years.
Congratulations on sharing 15 years of very interesting and educational information! Hope you will have pleasant surprises with many plants surviving this crazy late winter ice/sleet/snow event. Here in the DFW area I typically may have to toss an old blanket over the pansy/alyssum/dianthus bed once or twice during the winter. I’m now wondering if our foundation shrubs will pull through or if it will be another chainsaw required event similar to the crazy days of our 1989 ice storm. Hoping the ice predicted for Wednesday will be a no show.
Since you posted your comment, a lot has happened, hasn’t it? I hope your garden will pull through, Debby, and I’m hoping mine will surprise me as well. There’s a lot of damage out there right now, but at least the ice is finally melting.
Congratulations on your 15th blogaversary!
This post will be as memorable as your ‘moving Moby’ was.
Thanks, Diana. And yeah, maybe so! My next one may be even more so, when I share the full saga of this week.
Pam, congratulations on 15 years of great and inspiring posts. Your blog was the first one I read regularly (being shy I wasn’t a commenter) and you helped me push the publish button on Feb 8, 2008. You also encouraged me to to attend the fist Fling ever! Thank you! xoxogail
Gail, I’m so glad you pushed that publish button AND joined us at the first Fling!
I am a newcomer to your blog and LOVE IT, I feel like I have been on a dozen garden tours after looking through your archives. I am landscaping my Central Austin backyard and have gotten so much inspiration from your blog, crossing my fingers I have not lost all the new plants, I came to your blog to see what you were doing to prep 🙂 Thank you for this space you have created!
Thanks, Amy! I’m so glad you’ve found inspiration here! Like you, I’m worried for my garden, and we’ll just have to tidy up broken branches and melted succulents, and then wait and see if any left-for-dead plants will start pushing up new growth from the roots. Don’t be too fast in pulling out plants. Pro advice I’m reading says to wait until May or even June before giving devastated plants up for dead.
Congratulations on 15 years of blogging! You’re marvelously calm and stoic about losses and damage from the ice, the sign of an experienced gardener. Hope you’re able to keep power until this freakish cold passes.
Thank you, Nell! I’ve not been as calm about the garden devastation as I seemed in this post, I’m afraid – ha! We were without power for 75 hours and are still having to boil water before being able to drink or cook with it. But many Texans have it much worse. I’ll post an update in a day or two.
Congrats on 15 years Pam. Long time reader but I don’t post often. Thanks for the great reading over the last decade!
Your blog really inspired me to start gardening here out near Steiner in 2007.
Like you … I fear (maybe even depressed) for a heck of a lot of my plants here including Japanese Blueberry trees and bushes and palms etc. Some over a decade old. I’m really hoping for the best but I fear this freeze will put me back years. Like I could lose 75% of my garden.
But nobody could have ever thought 5° weather and sub freezing for 4-5 days was possible.
Gardeners are almost always the most optimistic though. Constantly planning for the future while overcoming the obstacles of the present!
Good luck!
Thanks, Mike. Like you, I’m feeling pretty low about my garden after this record-breaking freeze. I took my first walk around today — the first day it felt safe to get out there on the ice — and saw many broken branches and devastated plants. I fear I’ll lose a lot, just when my garden was reaching a level of maturity. But all we can do is clean up and keep an eye on things for a while to see what recovers by May or June. I’m hoping the local nurseries and wholesalers won’t have been devastated as well because we’ll all be doing a lot of shopping this year!
Thank you for blogging and happy blogiversary! I’m so sorry for your plants. It’s almost impossible to replace mature plants under the oak trees.
Thank you, Kim. Yep, all those tree roots mean starting over with small plants. But first I’ll wait and see for a while. Maybe some plants can come back from the roots.
Congratulations on 15 years!! And thank you, you’ve made such a meaningful difference in Austin gardening. I hope more of your plants survive than expected. I think I stressed about my plants almost as much as, (maybe more than), I worried about our pipes freezing. Now that we have snow on the ground, though, I’m just enjoying the scenery and will deal with the results, whatever they may be. I just hope the growers have been able to protect their stock, because we’ll need them this spring.
I hope for that too, Maggie. We will definitely need them after all this. Thanks for the good wishes!
You’ve accomplished so much! Brava! Much suffering in Texas with power outages. So sorry to see it. Missing places in the garden will challenge your creativity, but new plants await. Meantimes,, stay warm! Best wishes.
Thanks, Hoov!
Congratulations on 15 years blogging, that’s such an accomplishment! My heart certainly goes out to you and everyone else in the path of this storm system! You’re in my prayers. As devastating as the ice cover is, it does have a striking beauty. I hope more of your plants pull through than you expect.
Thank you, Erinn!
Loved reading this! Honestly, as a fairly new gardener it gives me comfort to hear your words of uncertainty over how your plants will fare. I live in central Austin with a newly landscaped, completely terraced, no lawn backyard, filled with all sorts of yummy native plants. This was only it’s second winter. I did so much work this last year with much pandemic gardening and was so excited to see how things would look this spring. What is distressing me most is a gorgeous mountain laurel, branches bowed to the ground, heavy with ice and snow. It’s one of only a few plants in our backyard that was here when we moved in. It survived a year of construction right next to it. It would be so sad if it didn’t survive this snowpocalypse. I’ll be eagerly reading your blog throughout the coming months to see how your plants fared and what you do to recover. Congratulations on 15 years of blogging—that’s quite a milestone!
Thank you, Michelle. And yes, I know exactly how you feel. It’s OK to grieve our gardens before moving on and putting on a brave face. Many gardeners have put so much effort and money into their garden-making over the past year, making it a place of refuge during the pandemic. And now this. But we will get through it, and we’re all in the same boat, and somehow that helps to know.
Happy 15th Blogging Anniversary!! Your blog was the first I learned to lean on as I ventured to start gardening in San Antonio 5 years ago. Your “plant this” series was incredibly helpful. And, thank you for posting during this unprecedented freeze; it’s nice to not feel alone as I grieve about the uphill recovery for our gardens.
Thank you, Amy, and I’m so glad to know my Plant This series has been useful to you. After this devastating winter event, we gardeners will all be grieving together, and then we’ll get on with it. Hopefully by May or June we’ll see more recovery than we expected. Fingers crossed!
I offer my sincere congratulations on your blogaversary my friend! I can’t tell you how grateful I was to find your blog all those years ago. Also, when we first went to Austin for the fling. It meant everything to me. I’m coming up on 14 years in October. Hard to believe. As to the ice storm, Oklahomans share your dismay. My garden will be completely different this spring and summer. I lost a lot of limbs and several small trees in the October ice storm. Now, we’ve had even worse temperatures and tons of snow. The good thing about snow is that it insulates roots.
I also want to say how sorry I am for Texans with the power issues and water problems and severe cold. I don’t think northerners understand how devastating this is. However, the national news has covered it extensively. Oklahoma fared a little better this time. Hugs and future happiness my dear!~~Dee
Thanks for the sympathy, Dee. It was a wild ride this past week, not just outdoors but indoors. I’m glad it’s behind us, and I’m starting a slow cleanup of the garden. I think there’s a lot we won’t know about, survival-wise, until a few months have gone by. By then we’ll all be looking ahead to early summer, and hopefully plants will surprise us.
I’m pretty new to your blog – we only just last year completed our landscaping project in East Austin and are so worried about all our new plants and trees – we chose native plants to ensure drought hardiness – but this weather sure isn’t native! Lesson learned – as I’ve been walking the neighborhoods (now that the power is back on and we aren’t freezing to death) I’m paying particular attention to what looks like it weathered the storm and what looks like its a goner. I’m hoping that many of my plants will come back from the roots once we cut them back – fingers crossed. It seems in Austin we are used to our perennials behaving more like evergreens but pretty much everything dies back to the ground up north (in the midwest) and re-grows each spring. I like your advice to wait a bit to see if there is new growth at the roots before yanking and replacing. Hoping the roots didn’t freeze. We will all be thankful for any advise you share in the coming weeks/months!
Good point — this was NOT native winter weather for us here in central Texas. Still, I’d venture that if your plants are mostly natives and they’ve had a few months to put down roots, they’re probably in as good a shape as you could hope for. We’ll just have to be patient to see what comes back from the roots. Please check out my Facebook page for advice I’ve been sharing from experts with decades more Texas gardening experience than I have. And now that things are getting back to normal I’ll be sharing my own experience on my blog soon. Hang in there!
Happy 15th Blog Anniversary!
Thanks, guys!
Congratulations on your blogversary Pam! I was searching “breeze block Austin” and your post came up (ty Google!). After the ‘85 deep freeze, all the variegated pittosporum plantings around town were wiped out (including my lovely property line hedgerow which screened an ugly next door yard). Pittosporums had been a go-to shrub for foundation plantings, loved for their lush evergreen hues and mounding growth habits. Once people crawled out of the winter, they saw one shrub happily thriving: red-tipped photinia. Boom. They were the hot ticket at nurseries and planted everywhere. Now, sadly, an invasive pest. One wonders what lies ahead for the Austin garden ecosystem after this unprecedented climate event.
Cheers, Libby (Aurora Primavera of old)
Hi Libby, it’s good to hear from you! It will be interesting to see if new planting trends arise from this storm. I expect avid gardeners will try again with some beloved plants that didn’t make it. Maybe this storm was like being struck by lightning, and what are the odds it will happen again in the next 10 or 20 years, right? Are we ready to roll the dice again? 😉