This weekend, Phoenix experienced a very rare freeze. The worst since sometime in either the 60s or the 70s.
Temperatures plummeted into the 20s even inside the city.
The next morning, hundreds of “ficus†trees, popular throughout the city and normally green year round, were brown and dead. In one night, the trees died en masse. Even the nurseries, who prepared with heaters and fans, lost hundreds of plants and thousands of dollars of inventory. Everywhere you drive, the brown tried stand out jarringly.
That, in itself, is depressing enough. What’s worse (to me anyway) is that I have two of these trees in the front yard. Each one was planted within one week of the birth of each of my children. They were James’ and Michelle’s trees.
It’s sappy, but someday, when they were adults, I expected them to be able to come back and drive past this old house and point to those trees out to their children and say, “Your grandfather planted that tree when I was born.â€
I can replace them, but it can never be the same.
The nursery says there’s a slight chance some of them may survive. It’s just a question of waiting a few weeks to see if they can grow back any leaves after these fall off.
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