I asked for this

Sunday 21 December 2008 - Filed under Plants

I got the winter weather I wanted, in a very un-Portland like storm. We got about a foot of snow, which blew around in big drifts several feet deep, like I’ve never seen before, followed by freezing rain, with more freezing rain and another possible foot of snow on the way, with temperatures locked in around 20 degrees. Holy cow. I guess I’ll find out what’s actually hardy here.

This is my big beautiful stand of bamboo, almost completely bent over, cutting off convenient access to the further reaches of the back yard. It reminds me a quote that always stuck with me, from an old episode of one of those BBC gardening shows, Ground Force or Charile’s Garden Army or something, where Charlie was dragging a pot of tall bamboo up a narrow stairway to a rooftop garden, bending the canes as she rounded corners, and she said something like “it bends, but never breaks.” It’s been a little bit my mantra when I’ve worried about my bamboo in times like this. New shoots actually break quite easily, but older culms seem to be pretty resilient. I’m hoping that’s the case this time when this event is all done.

My little winterizing cages I built for the borderline hardy stuff are completely covered up, I can’t even see them anymore. I got a good reminder of the mulch I never finished spreading when I tripped over a couple bags I left out on the patio. Fortunately the snow made for a soft landing, even if I did get snow in my pants. Graceful.

Portland pretty much shuts down when we get this type of weather, so unless something changes unexpectedly, we are house bound for a while here. The good news is we still have the important things, dog and cat food, hot chocolate, Baileys, internet, and TV. Last time we had a storm worse than this was in 2004, when I had my very first litter of foster puppies, 10 of them plus a mom. I was shocked at how much food and newspaper I went through, and was walking the two miles to the nearest store to cart home as much as I could carry, once and sometimes twice a day. Compared to that, this storm is a cake walk, just curling up on the couch with the dogs in front of a fire and waiting it out. The most action I’ve had so far was a little bird stuck in my enclosed back porch, but I managed to shoo him back outside without much fanfare.

2008-12-21  »  megan