What a dreary, dreary month. It’s…Novemberish. November has Thanksgiving, its saving grace, but it is gloomy, chilly, and daylight disappears noticeably. And here we are, in January, and it’s gloomy, chilly, and daylight has not reappeared because of the heavy cloud cover. And it snowed overnight; heavy, wet snow.
The dogwood and the serviceberry are none the worse for the wear, but the smokebushes are in a sad state; three major branches on two plants have split along their length. According to Wikipedia, mourning doves are roughly 12–14 inches long, which makes them a handy measuring guide as they sulk in the smokebushes. As a rough guesstimate, the splits are 2–3 feet long.
The damage to the branches is major and the branches have to be removed. Since the kitchen garden beds are below these branches, I will look at it as an opportunity to plant more tomatoes this summer.
A late February update: The broken branches have been trimmed back to the main stems. The bushes, which are the size of small trees look like they shrunk quite a bit. Cut up, they filled a couple of city compost bins. Their absence is allowing a lot of light to reach the ground.
We shall see what the smokebushes look like once they leaf out.