This is what the bushes in front of our house looked like after last week's snowstorm. Having grown up in Iowa I have to admit to a certain smugness about snow: what could east coast people know about snow that I didn't know?
Well, for one thing, they know how incredibly heavy it can get. These bushes aren't all bent over like that because they're sissy east coast bushes, they're bent over because that snow is really, really, wet and heavy. After last year's "Storm of the Century", which shut down the federal government for a week, two of my neighbors' sturdy-looking sheds collapsed under the weight of the snow. I did an awful lot of pruning on my poor butterfly bush, and decided to cut down the multiflora rose. I still wasn't quite sure if I should leave the butterfly bush or cut it some more, as one section seemed to have broken off from the rest and while still apparently healthy, was hanging very low to the ground. Here it is after the recent storm:
Half of it is basically laying on my neighbor's fence, while the other half is lying on the ground. I decided to cut off 98% of the section that was lying on the ground, leaving just one small bud on that section. When I looked closely I could see that the separation between the two sections of stem had grown much more severe than last year. I hope it will be able to bounce back and maybe balance itself back out this summer - they are really lovely plants.
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