I'm glad you were prepared and it wasn't worse for your family. Watch the chard for new growth sprouting from the root stalk. They are pretty tough.
Thanks, Begreen. I think the chard didn’t make it. It was in an old metal water trough, so it probably froze pretty thoroughly. There is one cauliflower showing tiny signs of life, so I’ll be watching it. I spent time on Thursday doing lots of transplanting (Swiss Chard, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, green onions). For some of those it was just one or two replacement plants I had been growing, so I’m starting some more chard, beets, and broccoli inside now.
The onions are perking back up even though they looked pretty awful last week. It’s getting better and better each day. There’s damage certainly, but there’s also hope for a good portion. It’s lovely to see when so much else in the landscape is looking pretty bad right now. Here’s a portion of that bed as well as a shot of my lone cilantro plant. I only had one, and I was amazed at how cold hardy it was. It really didn’t seem phased, though perhaps it was just well insulated by snow. I also have some young dill that is growing back from the centers.
The next picture is a shot of our large Satsuma Mandarin. We have hopes that we were able to keep the trunk and branches in fairly good shape, but it’s so sad to look at. We have two others, one which came through fine, the other which we really don’t know if it will survive at all. There’s nothing we can do but wait and see at this point.
On a happier note, we also had the delightful surprise yesterday of finding some asparagus spears poking up. We counted seven today. They‘re pretty hard to spot, not just in the photo but in real life, too, so it’s fun to hunt.
It’s actually a little late for planting potatoes down here from what I read (I’ve never tried it in this climate), but I already was sprouting my seed potatoes before that huge storm was forecast, so they went into the ground today. It will be an interesting experiment.
It’s so encouraging to see all these little signs of life and health showing up again when so much else that is usually green (palm trees, rosemary, and other perennials) are brown all over.