A year later...

Does anyone recognize this scenario? If you live in Houston, think back a little over a year, and consider what you woke up to the morning after Hurricane Ike. This happens to be the driveway leading up to Bayou Bend. Our gardens curator had to climb his way onto the grounds to start surveying the damage - there were really no words to describe it. The winds had twisted the tops out of, or toppled, an enormous percentage of the multi-story-tall loblolly pines on the grounds. Several huge oak trees and a champion holly tree were on the ground. Many of the trees had been stripped of so many leaves that they looked winter-bare. On the 9 tended acres of 14 acres of gardens, over 300 trees were down or destroyed. Some areas looked as though someone had turned on a giant vacuum and just sucked all of the vegetation into the sky and carried it away. There were huge areas which had once been shaded that were now bared to the sunshine, which of course is fine if you are not a shade-loving plant.

A year later, if you know where to look, you will still see mounds upon mounds of sawed up tree trunks, too heavy to be carried out by hand and too far back on the grounds to be reached by truck. One log was left where it fell, complete with beehive that noone wanted to disturb. The drought of the summer, and the overexposure to the sun took a toll on many of the shade-lovers, but the gaping holes are gradually being filled with the help of our truly amazing and dedicated garden staff, and Mother Nature lending a hand.