April 23 or February 23?

This is what my burning bush looked like when I woke up this morning. I realize that you have little frame of reference for this bush that’s taller than my 5’2″ height, but if you look carefully, you can see my metal plant supports in the foreground – the tallest one is about 18″ high. That gives you some idea of how the wet, heavy snow is really dragging the branches down.

My peonies were still standing up tall, but I can’t imagine they liked it.

I think peonies are pretty tough and I’m sure they’ll come back, but I don’t know what impact this will have on this year’s leaves or blooms. Although they’re far from budding, if these leaves die, the plant will have to put more energy into leaves, and may not have enough left for flowers this year.

Here’s a close up from the opposite end of the row.

My old-fashioned roses don’t seem as weighed down at the moment.

The arbor looked beautiful.

The Japanese quince is really hardy. I don’t worry about it at all. Even if some branches break, it’ll be fine next year.

I took these photos at about 7:00AM – we had about 3.5″ of snow at that hour. It’s now 8:00PM and it still hasn’t stopped snowing. At around noon there was over 6″ of snow, and I went outside and helped out a lot of my shrubs and my crab trees, all of which had already started leafing and flowering, by beating off the snow with a stick. It was remarkable to watch the heavy branches rise as the snow flew off with each hit of the stick. Of course, I was completely soaked by the time I was done.

Amazingly, by about 4:00PM, I could see many more leaves on trees & shrubs that I hadn’t touched. Although it was still snowing, the temperature had apparently risen enough that the snow melted off many branches. Even so, I’m still glad I did the snow-beating bit with my ornamentals. I was too late for one of my Bradford pears – it had already lost two large branches by the time I went outside. Plus, those trees are too tall & I’m too short to reach most branches.

The evening news predicted another 4-6″ of snow by morning. I wonder if I’ll be going to the office in the morning.