The lessons learned from the ice storm of 2013
It was a Christmas to remember.
Dec. 22, the day of the ice storm, what gardener didn’t want to weep? I stood outside, listening, feeling helpless, as trees around me groaned in pain — and kept crashing to the ground. When their limbs broke, the sound was like a shotgun going off. But then came the aftermath — a tinkling sound, like a massive plate glass window being shattered into tiny pieces — which drove home the reality of this unprecedented storm.
Ice. Tons and tons of ice. Have we ever seen so much ice in southern Ontario? The next morning, every single branch, twig, leaf and stalk in my garden was encased in a thick layer of the stuff. Shrubs and small trees were bent over like crippled old men. Brown hydrangea blooms resembled bunches of frozen grapes. And my soaring purple smoke bush had turned into some massive science-fiction spider, its gleaming tentacles splayed out across the garden path outside the front door.
But the worst part was damage to big trees. Everywhere I turned, massive limbs of spruce, ash and silver maple lay torn off — or still dangling in the air, looking like soldiers emerging from a battlefield.
I dread to think how many of my trees need attention. The cleanup bill is going to be huge.
But I didn’t care about that right after the storm because I was one of the folks who lost power. So many lines snapped under the weight of iced-up tree branches along our rural road, northwest of Toronto, that I now know why the Hydro guys hate trees and always want to chop them down. (At one line break, opposite our house, a spruce branch caught fire, spectacularly lighting up the night sky with sparks of blue and red.)
For four days and three nights, we huddled by the wood-stove in our workshop, cooking a cut-up chicken on the stove top Christmas Day, and nervously checking as the rest of the house gradually turned as cold as an ice box.
Yet now that everything is getting back to normal, here are a few gardening lessons I’ve learned:
Ice storms seem to be on the increase everywhere, so don’t plant silver maples. They are beautiful, for sure, but grow fast and are the variety of maple most susceptible to breakage.
Two glorious specimens currently grace either side of my lawn — yet this is the third time in two years they’ve lost limbs to ice or wind, and then required costly pruning by an arborist.
The same goes for purple smoke bush and other quick-growing shrubs like my fave, purple ninebark Physocarpus opu
folius. I adore them both, but their limbs are inclined to snap like matchsticks under ice.
Cleaning up sprawling shrubs and perennial plants is (contrary to what some would say) a good idea in the fall. I wish I’d barbered more of mine back then, because they’re in a sorry state now.
Yet not to worry. What I’m hoping for is a big dump of snow, to cover up the whole mess. Then I’ll forget the garden till spring. Sonia’s award-winning book, The Untamed
Garden, is now available in paperback. See
soniaday.com