The winter of 2019 is definitely one for the books. We’ve been through snow, rain, crazy temperatures swings, a winter thunderstorm, the polar vortex…and now another ice storm has hit the Chicago area.
As temperatures hovered around freezing, the precipitation has rotated between rain, sleet, freezing rain and snow. Aside from the treacherous driving and walking, the ice made for beautiful scenery. Pretty much everything outside, like my feeder pole and feeders, were covered in ice and icicles. If you look closely at the icy peanut feeder, you can see one of the red-breasted nuthatches that is spending the winter in my yard on the peanut feeder.
Looking around the yard everything, like this Dwarf Korean Lilac, was encased in a thick layer of ice.
The buds on the star magnolia were similarly encased. The spring flower buds are actually protected by the layer of ice as long as I don’t try to knock the ice off.
The annabelle hydrangeas are hanging heavy…
And the neighbors red-twig dogwoods are truly showing their winter colors.
What do do about the ice? Not much you can do without inflicting more damage to weak branches and spring buds. Best to just wait and hope that it thaws soon. The wind has been howling tonight, which means probably even more breakage since the weight of the ice makes everything really heavy. The river birch has been dropping branches all over the patio.
The arborvitaes are really having a rough winter between the heavy snow earlier this winter and now the ice. Only thing to do at this point is be patient. Multi-stemmed evergreens like arborvitae can be protected in the fall by tying up loosely with cloth, burlap or twine. But these are my neighbors shrubs, so all I can do is in the spring tie up the branches that have fallen on my side.
The Morton Arboretum has a great article on Winter Injury to Shrubs and Plants.
How are your plants fairing this winter?
Bonus photo: The sun came out today and made everything super sparkly!
