permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

>I was surprised to hear how bad it is for the trees where you are, Lisa--I 
wonder if it's becaues your trees were further along when the cold snap hit. 
The dogwood and redbud that I have seen look fine; I know the fruit and nut 
crop 
will be very scarce, but I had gone beyond that to worrying about the trees 
themselves dying, and from your note, some have. I have not been out to walk 
in 
the woods for a good two weeks, and will look for sassafras next time I go. 
Japanese maples were among the last to recover here, and a fair number of 
them 
have now come back, though damaged. But the oaks around here look great from 
what I can tell. I do worry about hidden damage and how these trees might 
fare 
against insects or drought. And how the critters dependent on persimmons and 
pawpaws and acorns and such will manage. 

Around here not one single native species has died. And I don't recall seeing 
any greenhouse or exotic trees that have died. But for a month after the 
frost, many species looked dead. It caught them right between first leafing 
out 
and flowering, depending on species-- a vulnerable moment.

They have natural coping mechanisms for this, apparently. Weather has always 
been variable from one year to the next, and I recall when I was a kid (in 
the 
fifties) it seemed like every other year there would be a devastating late 
frost. They all survived.

I always wonder what they did before people were invented. I guess no special 
care is required, for a viable inhabitant of Spaceship Earth.

Drought brings out the same mechanisms. We had a bad summer drought four or 
five years back. The sassafras went into shock and lost all their leaves 
then, 
as did a lot of other trees. It stayed dry the rest of the summer, and they 
never grew back. Next spring it was as though the episode had never happened.

Expensive ornamentals, of course, were quite another thing. They weren't from 
around here, and didn't understand searing summer sun and not a drop of 
relief in sight. Now for my ornamentals I grow hardy native species, a.k.a. 
weeds.