Dee, you’ve had a time of it! You sound so calm - 4 days with no power - the top half of an oak tree down - I would be recovering my equilibrium after all that!

Thankfully, we did not lose our power. We didn’t get much rain either, but there was wind, but not too bad. We have a lot of leaves all over the lawns. I had a large full, blooming Bronze Fennel flattened. A few Cosmos horizontal on the ground. The tomatoes were fine, having put cages around them. One Hydrangea looks a little worse for wear. The worst of it for me, was a very tall 5ft Aster, that I really look forward to for the fall, that had about 1/3 of the branches bent over. A couple that were snapped off. It was looking perfectly symmetrical and sturdy, standing up straight before the storm. Last year it stood straight right through to the first frost. I did my best this morning, to take 3 stakes and wind string around it and it’s put back together fairly well.

A lot of plants weren’t bothered at all and I am taking notes. Next year, I might like to give some support before some plants get tall. All I have now are peony rings and those do you no good once the plants are full grown. I might consider buying more supports that can be added after damage is done. Or just provide support early to avoid damage in the first place. I could have done more if I just had more stakes in the right sizes.

My son is encouraging us to get a generator. We were talking on the Bird thread this week and I was surprised that 3 people have generators. I am behind the times, apparently. [g] So we are going to look into it. I just wish they were easier to install. Having to be installed outside, seems difficult to me. I would hate to be without a/c in this very hot and humid July turning into August.

Dee - We use cardboard under our mulch. We find it lasts a lot longer. And when installing it, if you wet it down good, pierce it with a pitchfork and soak it then put at least a 3” layer of bark mulch over it, it settles in much better. It doesn’t keep the critters from digging through it at night though. [g]

Actually, PM2, I did consider staking some things before the storm, but I was worried that might make things worse - you know, snapping in the wind instead of bending and maybe returning to their normal states. I didn't undo the tomatoes and dahlias I had already staked, but I didn't add any reinforcements or stake the unstaked dahlias.

On the evening of the third day we borrowed my in-laws generator, but oh my, how obnoxious! We have one neighbor who works nights and sleeps days, and one neighbor who gets up around 4:30 for work, so we felt badly about running it too much - no to mention the sound was driving US crazy! So we ran it in roughly 1.5-2 hour increments in the evening, shut if off during the night, and the next day the same increments. We just powered the well pump so we could flush the toilet, and the freezer, hoping to keep the food that had been slowly thawing for three days!

CT (or at least my end of it) got pretty hard hit - massive power outages, taking days to restore - as I said some areas still without power. Many people are upset as one of the local utilities just included a rather sharp rate increase in the August bill! While many people are saying why pay all this money when they can't get their act together, I suppose the companies will just say this is WHY we need a rate increase, to provide better service. I just kept thinking of the thousands and thousands of trees that were cut down in the last few years to supposedly prevent these kinds of outages from happening again, and what good did it do?

And, PM2, I'm only calm because I've had four days to not do much else but sit and think lol! Things could be a lot worse, so you have to take these things as they come, I suppose. I am going to consider, however, like you, thinking about support for certain plants BEFORE it's desperately needed! That though had already crossed my mind during my post-storm tour of the garden!

:)
Dee

Gosh, I didn’t realize generators were so noisy. Worse than an air conditioner? So you were not able to run air conditioning at night? That has to be hard to be on a well too. Are there different generators that might be quieter? My concern has been that it runs on gas or propane, right? I hate having that around the house. We don’t even have a gas mower. Plus you can’t install it inside the garage or the basement, it has to be outside, right? That is the reason we have not installed one to this point, but, I think we should get past that and get one. With Covid 19, you can’t even go move in with a family member for a few days, if you’re trying to avoid exposure. And if you had to go to a hotel, again, same thing.

We haven’t had a power outage like that in years. I forget what year it was, that we were without power for 5 days, but we did lose all our food in the freezer and ended up at a hotel for some of that time. It was in the cold weather rather than the summer though. We’ve never lost power for longer than a day in summer. We are supposed to have an active hurricane season this year.

I never heard about cutting down thousands of trees to avoid power outages. And wow, if they did take all those trees down and they still had outages, you wonder if they know what they are doing.

As for more support in the garden, I think I am focused on low maintenance, but I don’t always grow low maintenance plants. That 5ft aster, was really sturdy and upright last year, but, really, a 5ft aster in a storm? Pretty easy to predict that was going to happen. [g]. That old saying, ‘an ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure.’ Really is true, but it’s not always easy or convenient to do the prevention.

I like cages for tomatoes rather than stakes. And Dahlias - I guess some of the really big blooms that are tall, probably need staking even without a storm. In my garden, I was surprised that the wind was a problem for bronze fennel, but the cosmos is pretty predictable. The ones that go over are multiple branching giants that develop from deadheading them every day. I think their root systems are pretty shallow.

Grasses, Perovskia, chrysanthemums, alyssum, sedums, even the roses did fine. Even my perennial Hibiscus did fine. Of course, shade gardens are easier too, a lot of them are low growing. Hostas, etc.

Well, I don't have air-conditioning so I didn't have to worry about powering it lol. From what I understand there are two kinds of generators. There's the mobile one like we borrowed. You set it up outside, it runs on gasoline, and the one we had had 4 outlets, one of which didn't work. So we ran one cord to the freezer, one to the well pump, and the third to the fridge, which really didn't matter at this point since most stuff was already gone. Then we put a power strip to plug in both the fridge and the phone chargers (once we finally got cell service back). I guess we could have powered a window unit if we had it, but the generator is so loud we wouldn't run it all night, not only out of courtesy to the neighbors but there's no way we could sleep with that racket outside the window lol.

Then there's a whole house generator, which is outside like an AC unit, and can run (obviously lol) the whole house. That runs on I think propane, and runs quietly and automatically takes over when you lose power. Like you, I hate the thought of a propane tank outside my house lol. My husband keeps telling me I'm paranoid, but I don't care. I don't like it. Doesn't look that great either lol. But, those are expensive I believe, so it's not in my budget any time soon anyway lol.

We had a five or six day outage a few years back when we had something like four feet of snow lol (I may be exaggerating slightly but not by much!). We at that time considered a generator but of course once the situation passed we didn't want to spend the money lol. When I first moved to this house we had very frequent outages in the summer, but they lasted about an hour or so. We used to joke every time the power went out that a squirrel was chewing on a line or something. That has gotten much better, but now these storms are getting worse and outages taking longer to restore.

And yes, after the latest hurricane (always mix up Sandy and Irene!) the electric companies said there were too many trees entangling wires, so they implemented a (I believe) statewide program to systematically go up and down the streets to cut down trees that were within 7 feet (??) of wires. We refused to let them cut down one of our trees. We gave them permission to trim, but they never did. It was horrendous - streets in my rural area looked devastated after they came through (apparently not too many other people refused the electric company; they may not have known they could have). I'm talking trees that were huge and very old and beautiful. In the place of the trees, invasive weeds have sprouted up and taken over, and now the japanese knotweed in particular is rampant. It looks awful and I miss the shady streets.

Yes, all my dahlias need stakes, even without a storm. Kind of a pain in the neck but worth it once they start to bloom!

:)
Dee

Apparently the storm did a lot of damage south of us. We had very little wind, but still lost power Tuesday afternoon. Since the outage restoration information computer was down, we had absolutely no idea when we were getting power back. However, the lights came back on just after we started cooking dinner. A friend who lives about 15 miles south still didn't have power back Thursday morning.

According to the local paper, the big issue with this storm is that a lot of poles came down. So it wasn't just a matter of restringing wires, but the poles have to be replaced.

We had some generally strong wind, and a brief period of very high wind in the night, but no rain. These storms tend to peter out before they reach us. I thought it was due to the colder water temps us here, which remove power from the storm, as well as the fact that as it passes over you all on land it weakens. Fairly uneventful for us. But, we've been a week without power before, so I know your pain!

Dee - Always impressed with hardy New Englanders who weather the storm and to never use air conditioning?! Since I do so poorly with heat, that is hard for me to imagine. [g] I know you have a lot of trees and maybe shade on your house, but still, there is the oppressive humidity.

So the permanently installed generator requires a propane tank. Hmmm…. Thank you for all the good info on generators, I’m just starting to explore the subject.

I’m glad to hear that you were able to opt out of cutting your trees for the power company. If they would just hire someone who had some idea of how to do the pruning without making a mess of the tree! They cut back my neighbor’s tree across the street for the wires and they actually did a pretty good job. He also had a crack in the trunk between two branches after a storm that they managed to wire together and surprisingly that tree looks very good now. But that is a rarity when they prune for the wires.

I suppose you do have to consider why people insist on planting trees that are going to be in the way of the wires.

Photos of your Dahlias would be great. ;-)

Madgallica - are you in ME? It doesn't surprise me that a lot of poles are down. When you drive by poles, that are being ignored that are leaning over the street or they come along and try to patch it by bolting in another pole, etc.

We have a new development near us that has underground wires, and they all have a big, huge, metal utility box on the corner of their lot near the street. Very ugly. Maybe they can plant to disguise it. I wonder what the statistics are for underground wiring. They will have fewer problems with storms and no poles to maintain, but if there is a problem, they have to dig.

Deanna - What are your experiences with hurricanes there, you don't get them as often as we do?

I never know what's going to break around here, but at least the neighbor's dead tree that's tall enough to hit pretty much anything it wanted is still standing. We did have a medium-small branch break on our hickory, but of course it decided to only mostly detach and dangle thirty feet up ... we had to get the tree company to bring in their bucket truck and cut it off before it ripped a long strip of bark off the tree; we got them to remove some of the looming branches off the dead tree while they were there, so now the creaking dead tree is less frightening. They did reassure us that that tree was unlikely to come down on its own, just drop more crap in the neighbor's driveway (hence why we had the stuff on our side removed). My Amethyst Mist was fortunate to have a bunny/deer cage ... it's cage was crushed, probably by something dropped by the tree company, but it's just fine. So new cage needed, but large perennial saved by the cage going above and beyond its job!

We moved most of our herb, tomato and pepper plants into the porch or shed. Shimmer lives in a sunken pot, so it stayed where it was and was relatively unfazed ... I think it might have lost one or two green tomatoes - we had picked anything close to ripe - but it has since lost as many to critters, based on fragments left behind, so no real loss there. The three tall plants that sit along the house went over into the house and wedged themselves, so they didn't suffer too greatly, except yellow pear, which went over more into the ferns, and the chipmunks rejoiced that their favorite take-out joint was doing delivery.

We actually had a slight benefit on the three tomatoes that went to the shed ... the shed gets pretty warm when the sun hits it, so the tomatoes got their ripening slightly sped up while we waited for the winds to be reasonable for the plants to come back out ... Stripe Roman gave us some gorgeous sauce tomatoes! We did have a few tomatoes fall off the plants when we were moving them, but they might ripen inside.

Cherokee Purple didn't do very well in prestorm winds. It has fallen over a few times already, but it really did a number on itself this time. Oh well ... we'll probably try it again next year, but in the sunken pot, so it can't fall over and crush itself and anything near it. Our mistake.

PM2, I'm in eastern New York, not too far from the Mass-Conn line. So the outages I'm reading about south of me are probably not too far from where Dee lives. I think power companies usually have a schedule for when they replace poles. Pole damage just hasn't been a big issue in other storms.

PM2, in my neck of the woods, the trees have been around a LOT longer than the houses lol. My house was built in 1951, and aside from three or four houses from the 1800's, it's one of the oldest houses on the street. And of course many of the trees are on property that is wooded, or in fields, etc., so it's not like they have all been planted by the homeowners, although I do see some that are and like you wonder why they aren't thinking ahead.

My triple-trunk oak that I lost had been cabled together. About 8 years ago I noticed a crack in the base (keep in mind the base of this tree was about seven feet high before the trunks split off into separate trees). I happened to pick an arborist who was awesome, who did everything she could to save the tree. So many of the tree guys I've dealt with over the years would have seen dollar signs in their eyes at this tree, but she cabled it and we got another five or six years of joy out of it. She actually went up to one of my trees and threw her arms around it, saying she loved this particular tree (I for one couldn't see why, lol, as I think there are several more interesting ones on the property, but she knows trees better than I do!) But yet another big storm worsened the crack and she said it just wasn't safe to keep it up anymore, so it had to go. She said the tree was about two hundred years old, so I'm guessing many of the trees the utilities cut down were anywhere from 100 to 200 years old. Of course many were nowhere near that old, but the majority of them were old established trees, and they certainly had no hesitation in cutting down trees as big around as a dining room table.

I do wish they'd put some of the money they spend on cutting down trees into putting wires underground. Expensive, yes, but in the long run it's so much better.

Just got back from driving to a farm a bit north of me, and there are still many, many trees down across roads. We had to turn around in some spots, or squeeze over and drive under a tree hanging in the wires (which I HATE to do!). Can't believe there are still so many without power. But I saw one house that had a little canopy set up, with some chairs and a table, near the street. As I got closer I read the sign they had hung out, which said "free charging station". I thought it was so nice to see people helping out others like that. They even had chairs so you could sit while your phone was charging! Nice to know that spirit is still alive!

:)
Dee

The neighbor’s tree was the same, it cracked in a split where the main trunk branched off in two directions. I thought at the time, ‘it’s never going to work’ so I was proved wrong, which is always a good thing to happen often enough to keep you realistic about your own opinions. [g]

I LOVE trees. And of course, the old 100 - 200 year old trees are usually my favorites. Well cared for, well shaped, healthy trees are such a blessing. The trees that replace them are usually newer smaller, untested varieties that are inferior to what they replace, which I find sad.

Yes, it is inspiring to run into someone trying to help out in an unexpected way. :-)

PM, most of the time the hurricanes have died down to a bad storm when they get this far. The warm water of the gulf stream is their "fuel," and at Cape Cod it heads back into the Atlantic. The colder water on our coast tend to suck the danger out of the storms. Occasionally we'll get one that comes up this far if it was powerful and hit land north enough. In that case the storm travels towards us faster than it is losing power and we can have floods and high wind.

Our little neighborhood has underground utilities and I am SO grateful. We still lose power often because the main roads that serve the neighborhood are pretty much guaranteed to always have issues, but if we had damage within our neighborhood I know it would take even longer for the power company to get to it. It's a given around here to assume you'll lose power. We now have a portable gas generator that gives us plenty of power. It only took six years of living here for us to finally make it happen. ]:-{

Yes, CT got whacked by that storm. We lost power, but miraculously only for two days. However there are people in my town don't have it back yet. Dave was able to rig something Wednesday morning so we could run power from his truck to the fridge for a few hours and bring it up to temp. We used water from the fountain to flush toilets...lol. Then we were able to borrow a generator which we ran til bedtime Weds night then again Thursday morning. Power was back by noon.

Sorry you lost your tree Dee. Tree damage is extensive here in the Farmington Valley. I tried to get into work Weds. morning but had to give up because I kept getting detoured by closed roads and none of the traffic lights were working. Fortunately the garden suffered no permanent damage, mostly plant blow overs. Lots of little branches and leaves everywhere. Between this storm and no real beneficial rain here since May, my garden is looking tired.

Our neighborhood has underground utilities but the lines that feed us are above ground so it really doesn't help much except being a nice aesthetic.

Sue, you and Dave sound pretty resourceful. [g]. These are the type of storms I seem to expect more in winter than summer. Yes, the garden is looking pretty tired, but to me, this time of year that's pretty par for the course. It improves in September when fall plants start blooming and I get some cooler weather to clean up better, but, spring and early summer seem to be when my garden looks it's best. I think it's hard to have it looking good the entire growing season. Something that is always my aim, but not always within reach. This year has been hot longer than I remember other seasons and it's still not over. That is keeping me out of the garden more than I usually am and the garden starts looking uncared for.

I didn't realize that having underground utilities were vulnerable due to the lines above ground that feed into yours. Makes complete sense.

Sue, I had a feeling you were also hit pretty hard. Just last night I saw on the news that about 135,000 people in CT are still without power. My daughter got hers back yesterday. It's crazy, and the changing weather patterns don't help much either.

PM2, I could have written your post lol. My garden also always looks pretty tired this time of year, regardless of storms, mostly because the gardener is tired too, haha. It's just too darn hot and humid for me lately, and each year seems to get worse. Maybe if I had the prospect of a cool, air-conditioned house to return to, I would stay in the garden longer. But these last few weeks you're lucky if you can get me out there at 6am to water and then run in by 8:30 to get out of the sun!

I was reading the thread on garden review and one thing I've been thinking of the past few weeks as I drag the hose around is changing to plants that need less water. Not only is watering tedious, but from an environmental standpoint I feel guilty watering my garden when water is a disappearing resource. That's one reason why I'm such a big shade buff and enjoy my shade gardens - they need less water. Being on a well I also have to make sure there's enough water for the humans lol.

:)
Dee

I wonder if it's taking longer to get power back on because of difficulties staffing with the Covid19?

Dee - I have air conditioning and some days, it does work out that. I can get out there early get a few things done and go back in to cool off. Some days I go in and out all day, cooling off enough to try it again. But that stops working for me when we have heat and humidity for this long a period of time with very few breaks. I'm hoping we will get cooler less humid weather soon. Not this week, I hear.

As for using plants that are more drought tolerant, I have found that a difficult goal. I have clay soil and the majority of drought tolerant plants usually come from a desert environment where they do better with sandy soil. It could be I haven't looked enough, but I did initially try more drought tolerant plants, but they didn't work well in my soil. Sedums being the exception. Even grasses - Pennisetum 'Hamelin' is my favorite trouble free grass, will yellow if it doesn't get enough water. The Salvias, the Agastaches, Lavenders, etc. that I love, really don't enjoy clay soil. I get away with a couple that I plant at the top of a small slope, with gravel added under the soil below it. But even then, they are not as vigorous as they should be.

And my shade garden, I suppose it does require less water then in the sun, but again, there are so many shade plants that need a fair amount of water. Lobelia and Astilbe as examples. The one that I rely on heavily for drought tolerance are epimediums. Even hostas can burn up on me. Heucheras, forget it. They were crispy very early even with a fair amount of water. I don't think they like the heat. I blame it on tree roots that suck up all the moisture.

PM, you hit the nail on the head with dry garden plants in our northeast gardens. Most don't like the wet, cold springs we have here. Instead I've been working on improving my soil. I'm finding that the gardens I've amended with lots of compost are looking infinitely better with less water.

On the news this morning, it was reported that northern CT is in moderate drought with a nine inch rain deficit. The seemingly relentless heat isn't helping.

Deanna, I seem to have missed your post. All these years I’ve lived in MA and years ago, visited ME in the summer, my mother came from Maine where some of her family still is, and I never realized that the hurricanes that we get lose power before you get them. Very surprising, but of course, makes perfect sense.

Do you have the same issue with noise with your portable generator? Installed outside, have to have gas stored somewhere for the generator? Would you say a portable generator is installed, or do you store it and take it out when needed?

Sue, yes, it is a catch 22 with drought tolerant plants. How do you get lots of compost, you don’t produce it yourself do you?

I also didn’t see BlueberryBundtcake’s post, I’ve been having trouble with Houzz lately, though I don’t usually.

BBundtcake - Sounds like you are getting a lot of enjoyment out of your garden. Glad you didn’t have more damage from the tree branch coming down. We had a big one come down in April and luckily it ended up on the ground. But - it was high up and on it’s journey down, it got stopped and held up by the lower branches for a couple of days and we didn’t even realize it until just happened to be going past it and looked up to answer a question someone was asking me about the tree, and something looked off. The branches looked all tangled up and then I saw the place on the trunk where the branch broke off, quite a ragged break. That was such lucky timing because we were due for another windy night and we were able to move the van out of the driveway and sure enough the next morning the branch was down, right where the van had been. [g]. We were able to cut it up ourselves and didn’t have to call the tree company. Glad we still have our van intact too!

Glad to know you like Stripe Roman - I’ve been looking for a paste tomato. I’ll have to give that one a try.

Yeah, it's one of our favorites. I bought it at an earth day event a couple years ago, and we've had to have it again every year since. We did San Marzano a few years ago and it was pretty good, too.

Glad your van made it out unscathed. The April storm is probably the one that broke a branch off one of our giant white pines. We've had a lot of wind this summer ...

We put 7 Striped Romans (and an Extreme Bush) into sauce yesterday, and we've got two ripe for the next batch:

BBundtcake - those are really nice looking paste tomatoes! Good size too. Hopefully you will get a good harvest to pack your freezer for the winter. :-)

Yes, my DH and I were saying awhile back what a windy season this has been.

PM, the generator is noisy. It is stored in the garage next to the outlet to which we plug it in. That outlet is wired to the main electrical panel. When we have outages we bring it outside Because of the exhaust and put it under the eaves. It is loud, but I’d rather hear that sweet loud motor running if it means I can actually flush the toilet and wash my hands and wash dishes and wash whatever needs washing. Basically, it means I have water from the well! It’s pretty miserable without water.

I agree on the drought tolerant plants. They may be nice during a drought, but our soil isn’t built for it. I do have a massing of lavender that has looked fantastic since I planted it in 2017. It is in a raised bed, and I put gravel Over the top of the soil when I planted it, a trick I learned from the Canterbury Shaker Village in NH. That’s how they grew their lavendar. I’m starting to think the gravel has made a big difference. The crowns don’t rot. I’m always amazed at how well they do. I’ve planted some drought-loving penstemon and blue globe thistle this summer. I need to get more gravel to put on top fo the soil!

Dee, you’re right—she MUST have been a gardener! That is hysterical!

Astilbe hates me. I love it, but it never comes back.

What we've gotten from Cherokee Purple have been good, but several had to be tossed, and what we've gotten to try have been only half a tomato due to damage. We're waiting on our first whole tomatoes to ripen ... on the kitchen counter (they were part of the bowl of green tomatoes that fell off).

BBundtcake - I tried one of the heirlooms, maybe it was Cherokee Purple or Brandywine. I haven't had luck with either. One of them has a very thin skin, which made it very difficult to allow to ripen on the vine without it falling apart and splitting. The only way we got tomatoes from that vine that year was to pick them before they split and ripen them in the house. That helped, but I did n't want to grow that tomato again.

Other people have success with it, so it could be me.

Deanna, Yes, I’m sure noise can be a small price to pay for power. At night would be the issue for us. Someone said the generators that are permanently installed are quieter. I was talking to my neighbor yesterday and he has one. He said he put it in 10 years ago after the only time since I’ve lived here, that we were without power for 5 days. He has it outside and built a box for it with insulation for the noise. He said he’s never had to use it since, so not exactly the greatest investment he’s made. But I thought, well it’s like an insurance policy, you hope you never have to use.

Great tip on growing lavender with gravel as a mulch. I have been able to grow one variety of Lavender without a problem, Lady Lavender I think the name is and it’s grown from seed. I’m sure they have much prettier varieties available now. And being in a raised bed helps too.

I have Penstemon too. I wish it bloomed longer. Haven’t tried Globe Thistle.

Dee, I was just looking at Astilbe yesterday. I haven’t grown it in years because I just can’t keep it watered enough. I put two in last fall and now they are looking fried. I let that bed dry out just a little too much. Inevitable at my house.