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It's been snowing all day long here in northern NJ, It started in the night. Six to eight inchs of snow is predicted. This is a freak storm. We hardly ever get any snow before Halloween - and never serious accumulation.
The snow is wet and heavy, and because the trees haven't dropped their leaves yet, the heavy snow is settling in them and dragging the tree branches down low. Trees are down everywhere.
We just sustained a great loss - that of our 180+ year old fig magnolia.
Fig magnolias are a cultivar found only here in the Oranges (Essex county, NJ). Back in th mid-1820s or early 1830s, a peddler came to the Oranges, selling fig trees - a cultivar of fig tree that, h said, would grow and produce fruit in this cold climate. The people living here foolishly believed him and bought these trees, and planted them in their yards. The following year, weren't thy surprised to discover that they owned magnolia trees - not fig trees! Of course, the wily peddler was nowhere to be found when the homeowners wanted their money back.
These magnolias grow huge. Mine was about 50 feet tall. You can see that it covered about 60-65% of my house roof on satellite pictures. Evrey spring, humongous clouds of huge pink-and-whit blossoms covered my tree - and later, my lawn.
How sad to lose such a venerable and beautiful old tree, after all these years!
I'm really gonna miss it. sniff sniff
<span style="font-weight: bold">Here's the beautiful pink magnolia in a last spring ---</span>
The snow is wet and heavy, and because the trees haven't dropped their leaves yet, the heavy snow is settling in them and dragging the tree branches down low. Trees are down everywhere.
We just sustained a great loss - that of our 180+ year old fig magnolia.
Fig magnolias are a cultivar found only here in the Oranges (Essex county, NJ). Back in th mid-1820s or early 1830s, a peddler came to the Oranges, selling fig trees - a cultivar of fig tree that, h said, would grow and produce fruit in this cold climate. The people living here foolishly believed him and bought these trees, and planted them in their yards. The following year, weren't thy surprised to discover that they owned magnolia trees - not fig trees! Of course, the wily peddler was nowhere to be found when the homeowners wanted their money back.
These magnolias grow huge. Mine was about 50 feet tall. You can see that it covered about 60-65% of my house roof on satellite pictures. Evrey spring, humongous clouds of huge pink-and-whit blossoms covered my tree - and later, my lawn.
How sad to lose such a venerable and beautiful old tree, after all these years!
I'm really gonna miss it. sniff sniff
<span style="font-weight: bold">Here's the beautiful pink magnolia in a last spring ---</span>
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