Cruel winter casts a deadly shadow

IN a bed beside the front yard is a shrub I’m rather fond of.

It’s a prostrate rosemary that flows down over tiers of railway sleepers in a cascade of dark green needles and, in season, pale blue flowers. Bees love it and so do I —- it’s not only decorative, it also adds an aromatic taste of the Mediterranean to roasts and casseroles.

It’s been there for decades but unfortunately it now appears to be defunct. Twelve months ago it died after heavy frosts but last summer it rallied and started to grow again. This winter it was blanketed in snow for several weeks and subjected to temperatures that went as low as minus 12 or 14. It now appears to be what is known in rhyming slang as ‘brown bread’. I’ll prune it right back and see if it grows again from the root, but I’m not hopeful.

It’s not the only casualty. An old hedge separates the cottage garden in front of the house from the lane. It’s formed from a box-like shrub called Lonicera nitida, I don’t know a common name for it. The weight of snow bent and flattened it. And when the snow melted not only was it a distorted shape, all the evergreen foliage was burnt brown.

I’m more optimistic about the hedge. I think it will green up again when the weather gets a bit warmer and that I’ll eventually be able to trim it back into shape.

But on the other side of the house is a Pittosporum, a small tree, maybe three or four metres tall and originating in New Zealand, that frames the view from the patio. It’s also an evergreen, or it was until the snow came. Since the thaw it has been a leafless grey skeleton.

I don’t own any cordylines or cabbage palms — those small, yucca-like trees — mainly because I don’t particularly like them. But many of my neighbours are fond of theirs and every single specimen in this cold part of the Midlands is now dead, and some of them are 30 or 40 years old. Many have been felled, others are still standing — trunks with drooping tufts of grey-brown fronds at the top, waiting hopelessly for the day of resurrection.

There’s a farm a few kilometres away and the house is set back from the road, accessed by an avenue lined with eucalyptus trees. The species is Eucalyptus gunnii, the cider gum, usually a hardy and fast growing tree in this country. But the cold got to them too and the leaves hang down in pale bunches, like dead men’s fingers.

And it’s not just plants that have suffered. I have a little pool in a rock garden, perhaps 40 centimetres deep. It seems that when the weather started to get really cold a number of hibernating frogs in the area woke up in frigid crevices in the rockery and took refuge in the slightly warmer water. Then the pool froze all the way to the bottom and, when it thawed again I removed six cold frog corpses from this small patch of water.

It’s harder to tell with the birds. I know many of them have died. I’ve found some bodies. There was a wren that used to squeeze in through a little gap to spend the night in my conservatory. In the morning it used to deposit tiny droppings as it hopped around trying to relocate the little gap so it could get out again. But it hasn’t been around for a while.

The only birds that seem to be doing well are the magpies and the grey crows. It’s been a good winter for carrion eaters.

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