So, I think most of the things I have that are planted can tolerate cold weather. The spring bulbs are all but petered out anyways and the only other things that are in the ground are columbines...are they okay uncovered?

The o ly one I really wonder about is my lilies that have recently come up through the dirt... Are they at all frost/cold tolerant?

Established day lilies should be fine, Zach, but if these are newly planted, you might want to cover them. Most of my daylilies are fully leafed out and looking happy and I don't think I have enough extra sheets to cover them all! Who knows what will really happen, but right now it looks as if the temps will only dip below freezing for a - hopefully - brief time, Saturday night into Sunday. If it snows, the snow will protect things a bit, too, as I imagine you are aware.

I am keeping my fingers crossed - my carrots finally are starting to come up, my potatoes, onions and peas are really doing well. Since they can all be planted well before the last day of frost, I am hoping they will take this - please let it be brief - freeze in stride. I guess I will find out!

Holly

I got outside early this morning thinking I'd get out before it rained. Much to my surprise, it was already raining. In the downpour, I covered my two peonies, delphinium, bleeding heard, ajuga, two lupines and my container garden full of carrot seedlings. I need to cover one annual planter. I had just put my avocado and cannas outside, those were swiftly moved back inside into my kitchen.

I'm hoping that will be enough.

Hope the columbine will be ok, too, Zach - I have one as well. It's not blooming or budding yet, and it's an established plant, so hoping for the best there. Bleeding Heart I think is ok, popmama. Seems like mine has been tested like this before, and made it through ok (I did cover it one year, but other ones didn't make it in time for that and it didn't seem to suffer that I recall). Hope that's the case again this time, as I don't have anything big enough to cover it that won't mash it down - think that might be worse than the cold temps and some ice/snow.

Marj

My 10:30 update. It's a lot of snow. Heavy, wet snow. Anything not covered will likely be smashed by the weight. I'll be surprised to see what comes out of this alive. I just went out and shook off branches on my peach tree, but more snow will be coming when I'm fast asleep and unable to continue shaking the tree. Sad.

Thank you for the update! It's heavy here too, and several inches have already fallen. I'm about to head out and shake our trees before getting to bed. Hopefully everything makes it through okay. I was able to cover up many things, but couldn't get everything.

It seems to lightened it's load a little bit...for now. Got quite a bit out on the grass roads are slushy, hopefully the ground is warm enough to keep them that way, 4x4 is still kaput.

As for the PLANTS! Well, as the saying goes "this is why we can't have nice things." I took the "courageous" (or, maybe "stupid") route and just said to hell with it, and didn't cover anything. We shall see tomorrow if my lazy ways come back to haunt me. I figure the snow cover will protect them from the cold, and as long as things don't break, they should, in theory, spring back up. The only things I brought inside was the P. strictus babies, though, by the time I remembered them they already had 2" of snow on top.

No broken trees this morning for me. I'll see once all this snow melt if any of my flower dreams were broken.

Fingers crossed for all of you

The snow is weighing heavy on the trees. I covered as much as I could and brought in what I could. It is cold out there.

Here is Wishing Everyone ..

. the Best of Luck.

Steve

Well, everything LIVED through the night, can't say everything is HAPPY. All the leaves on the ash trees got burned. And remember way back when, when I said what I really wanted was for my iris to bloom, well, the buds on the ONE single bloomstalk that I got, got burned, so, I guess that was a pipe dream. Also a bit concerned about the Siberian iris that was looking awesome and now all the stems that were going to turn into flowers are soft and floppy. My big penstemon is flat as a pancake, supposed to be 2-3' tall, more like 8-12".

As for tonight, well, now I'm worried. No snow and even colder than last night? I don't have a way to cover everything. The frustration and aggravation because of this God forsaken weather just keeps getting worse. Maybe I should take a cue from the old couple that lives down the road and just stick a bunch of fake flowers in a pot on the patio.

Either that, or, instead of xeriscape, maybe I ought to adopt zero-scape and just cover ever square inch of what's left of my landscaping in rock.

P.s. Rob Proctor's tip for today: heavy drinking.

LOL Zach - yea, it's tempting some times to just resort to plastic for landscaping! Think my plants should make it through the cold tonight ok, but sure wish I would have covered the Bleeding Heart last night! It was actually the one plant I thought would do well, but didn't account for the weight of the snow. It has a lot of broken stems :( Everything else actually looks like it made it through ok. My Penstemon is a bit flat as well, but I think it will spring back up ok. The blooms on my Iris are probably going to just drop off (some did while I was tapping off the snow this morning), but think the buds are ok (when I checked later this afternoon, the look like they'll be ok).

Marj

I couldn't bear to look at the backyard today. I happened to notice some rose stems bent all the way to the ground in the front yard when I was leaving the house earlier, so I propped them up. Only one of them is truly broken, but not sure how they will fair after being bent all the way to the ground. I'll assess the backyard tomorrow. Mstywoods, I did cover my bleeding heart, but not sure how the cover worked in the weight. I'll know tomorrow.

I ended up covering my raised beds and containers (had a couple planted with potatoes) Saturday and Sunday nights. The perennials were on their own. Other than a few of the onion shoots, every thing seems to be OK. My major problem now is the 2-3" of standing water in my backyard. Sigh.

Holly

The trees took a beating here in south east Aurora. My trees did ok just a few snapped branches. I was most concerned with the multi grafted pear tree. Went out several times to shake it. It came through ok except for being saggy.

Most of the rest of the plants have a flattened look.

I see that you Colorado gardeners are just beginning to assess the damage.

Wyoming gardens might not amount to much yet but I was noticing that Cheyenne only achieved 1° above freezing for a Sunday afternoon high. Wind chill there was in the single digits during the nighttime hours.

My spell checker wants to change "nighttime" to "nightmare" ...

Steve

My Black Dragon Lily will live to bloom another year, but not this one. Bummer. We got down to 27 Saturday night. The lily was protected, but not well enough. Everything else seems to be okay. I'm answering a lot of questions around here about tree damage, Barb. I'm telling them it was the November deep freeze, not the soggy week. The soggy week sure didn't help any recovery attempts, but it was that November freeze that did the big damage.

Since you brought it up, Jali, I have a tree question too! So, not long before this weekends cold snap, my ash trees put out their little baby leaves. They all got burned...badly. Theres nary a leaf that I can see that isn't completely destroyed. Will they put out new growth or will I be replacing them?

Oddly enough all the Gambel oak at work got burned, too. You'd think that being designed for Colorado's wretched spring climate they would be used to this type of thing. Now, if only we could find a way to get rid of the mullein....

My Eastern redbuds ( I have two, volunteers from a neighbor's tree) were looking good, all full of blooms and tender new leaves just starting to emerge. The cold this weekend zapped all of the leaves; I am hoping they will recover. Not sure about the ash trees - bummer, Zach - but the oak will recover I am sure. The leaves on the trees in my Gambel's oak "grove" still look good, and my Mongolian Oak, that often gets zapped by a late freeze, looks fine as well. This freeze was late enough that the leaves weren't so new and tender...but even when the leaves get totally wiped out, a fresh new flush of them comes out, so I am thinking the Gambel's will do the same thing. And maybe the Ash trees will as well - it is amazing what plants can go through and still survive, although that apparently doesn't apply to fruit trees when the fall is warm and they still haven't gone into dormancy in November. :-(

Holly

Yep, deciduous trees have a secondary set of buds held in reserve for just such occasions. If the secondary leaves get frozen, the plant is in trouble.

Oh, I KNOW the oaks will be just fine. Even if not, there's 20,000 suckers ready to shoot up for every one tree that is lost. One of my co-workers said we need a good fire to clear out all scrub oak we have, I just laugh, he doesn't understand it will simply encourage MORE of them to sprout. Gambel oaks grow like weeds.

Good to know the ash trees aren't toast though! I will keep a look out for the second set of buds!

Around here (SE Aurora), the trees with compound leaves got hammered. Third spring in a row, and after the disastrous fall freeze. Some trees are going to be severely stressed for this summer of El Nino.

:o\

Discovered today that all the new leaves on my old vine grapes are toast. Hope they have a plan, I would hate to lose them.

Ugh, this weather just keeps on giving, doesn't it? Rained all night last night, supposed to rain off and on - mostly on - all day. I again have standing water in my backyard. What wasn't stressed by the fall freeze followed by this late spring freeze is bound to be stressed from their roots drowning in this heavy clay soil. A few of my perennials appear to be drooping - certainly not lack of water, so I suspect their roots are rotting.

This merry month of May is being quite unpleasant. Guess we will know what perennials have failed pretty soon; the trees that survived the winter will show the stress from this spring flooding at a later time.

Holly