I Missed the Latest Storm But My Garden Wasn't So Lucky

When the snowstorm hit I was sitting on a bench shadowed by Spanish moss in one of the historic squares of Savannah, Georgia. I'm not sure which one, after all there are twenty-one squares to choose from; suffice it to say, I sat in a lot of them that day. And yes, I was gloating about all the sunshine I was soaking in, while the gloppy stuff was coming down up north.

Well, you know what they say about karma.

If there's anything I've learned about snow since moving here three-ish years ago, it's that snow is never the same. Yep, it's almost always white and cold, but after that it's anyone's guess as to how it might characterize itself on any given day. The snow that fell on November 13 might have been described by the Star Trib as "oatmeal", but I think it was more the consistency of concrete.

In the busyness after coming home, between college-runs of kids home for Thanksgiving and the actual cooking, I didn't have much time to take in the tragic demise of one of my prettiest trees. But now I know, to paraphrase Whitman, "lilacs bloomed last in my dooryard that day".

"You don't know what you've got til it's gone"

Like a colorful parasol, that lilac tree gracefully shaded my patio while giving structure to the courtyard enclosure. I never fully determined its real identity and now it's too late. It was a tree, although multi-stemmed, and it was a lilac. But it was not the fragrant white variety like the one that grows in my backyard. And it was not a shrub lilac, although it was purple and bloomed in the spring. It flowered at different times than all the others and seemed to defy description.

Maybe someone else might solve the mystery. Only now all that's left is to put it out of its misery.

It lays cracked and splintered from the center outwards, splayed across the pathway. I'll miss the beautiful blooms that lured me out to the porch even in chilly weather, not to mention the tiger swallowtail butterflies that fed from it on sunny spring days. The birds; the chickadees, cardinals, robins and catbirds will miss it as well. It was a favorite gathering place for them; even more so after the pine trees were felled in the windstorm just a few weeks before.

Back when it was a favorite gathering place for the birds

There's another feature of that tree I will be missing. It screened my large bathroom window from the neighbors across our pond, sparing them the sight of me exiting the shower. I'll be needing another kind of curtain.

This morning I was finally able to survey the the rest of the damage, and the lilac tree was only the beginning. Small spruce trees were pulled from the ground, and what the snow didn't do in, the snow plows finished. All through the property, branches are bent and buried under snow, seemingly frozen in perpetual prayer, waiting to snap with the spring thaw.

I managed to rake the heavy coat from the evergreen hedge which recoiled with a robust 'sproinnngg'. However the delicate shrubs that were the hit of the summer garden tour, the variegated daphnes, are gone; bowed at the crown, the surviving branches all misshapen. The daphnes were borderline hardy for this area, yet it wasn't the cold, but the snow load that got them. That was the surprising nature of this damaging weather event.