The Day After

The morning after the election it snowed. It snowed all day and kept going. 
 

I watched it snow, and did little else. What else could I do?

It was heavy and wet, and many trees still have their leaves on this early in November, so the weight of the snow on leaves made branches sag, and I began to deflect my broad angst at the state of the world toward the perilous state of my trees.

The western redbud has large heart shaped leaves that hold the snow. It also has brittle wood, so weighing down branches with heavy snow causes breakage.

I channeled my general despair to the redbud as I watched it droop. I felt justified in my growing panic -- I had exactly this same small tree --Cercis reniformis 'Oklahoma' -- in my garden in Connecticut, and when it was about the same size and in full leaf one fall, a wet snowstorm cracked it right down the middle.

I lost that tree. I decided to replicate it when we moved to Santa Fe, and planted one here, babied it through dry weather, spider mites, a trunk canker and my ineptitude at first when I didn't water enough. 

It was looking good finally. This is its seventh year growing here. The redbud I lost under heavy wet snow back east had been in that garden seven seasons too. The coincidences and timing gave me pause on a day when some kind of weird cosmic retribution was already brewing and it all seemed too ominous.

You're not supposed to knock off snow loads since that action itself can break limbs. But I did go out and shake the little redbud free of snow. I had to do the same for a skinny cedar sapling by the fence, which had completely laid down sideways on the ground and needed to be rescued.

By the time I went back inside snow had re-deposited and branches were already weighed down again and it was getting dark. A sense of futility, a little bit of panic and a feeling of deja vu crept up on me, magnifying my mood.

Will my slender cedar stay upright? Will my little redbud sapling survive? Will we?

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Despite my efforts to shake the snow off branches, it continued to snow all night and beyond. I can't even get out there to do any more damage control.