ASSESSING THE DAMAGE

April is the cruellest month. Somebody said that already, though he was eat up with regret and thinking about something else.

The damage to this forward Spring is severe. Japanese maples, blasted. Lilacs won't bloom this spring, nor the climbing hydrangea, nor the crabapple, nor the viburnams. I haven't been out to look closely, but the blackened leaves and buds I can see out of all windows is a melancholy sight.

And not at all unique. Not many years ago we had low 20s on May 20th , and all the hostas turned black, along with everything else. They all recovered, eventually, but it was a blighted year.

We'll be a month or more before the leafed trees and shrubs fully recover, and some of the exotics may have been dealt fatal blows, like innocent, dumb tourists shivved on our streets of early April. Poor things.

Notice that our mountain natives have been wiser. No native tree had shown a leaf, and probably won't now until half-way through May. But these fotched on species are always fooled by forward springs, and suffer hard, black death. Pray their roots are clinched in a rictus of determination and that we'll see the green fuse light up again.