Long, long ago in a land that for all practical purposes might as well be far, far away, it was not brutally hot. No, really. Think back… it was a time known as “February”. It was a time when British towns were not being looted and Standard and Poor’s wasn’t quite so dismal. Not only was it not so hot, it was cold. It was really cold. There were no leaves on the trees, but it wasn’t because of drought. The landscape was bare and stark and the ground was rock-solid. And then, one morning, we came to work here at the nursery to find fantastic scenes of alien worlds, fairy castles, and extravagant island resorts built by Middle-eastern sheiks. There was ice, and not just a little. Remember that? Maybe you do. Maybe you have a vague memory that you’ve started to assume was a really crazy, really vivid dream. But it was real. We know because we saw it, too, and we took pictures.
This sprinkler stand was a column of ice all night, but as the sun struck it in the morning, I was able to catch that little drop of water coming off of the stalactite on the right in mid-drop.
There’s this really cool succulent plant called Lithops, which kind of look like little round rocks that have been split in half. These looked to me like Ice-Lithops.
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| Non-ice-Lithops |
One of the best things about the ice was all the different and weird patterns it made.
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| Grass in stasis |
The frozen grass made a very satisfying crunch when stepped on, which presented us with a dilemma: stomp around in it and listen to the crunch, or leave it as pristine as possible as long as possible?
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| An ice-beard hanging off of one of the pots |
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| Ice-roots |
Ever read Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”?
The ice has decided to colonize the pot, and is trying to put down a root to anchor itself there.
It’s like these trunks started out as pure ice, but were slowly becoming real trees as they grew. That ice is tricky stuff.
Ice-falls. If you were about two inches tall, this would be so awesome!
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| Poor frozen extremities of the Dwarf Yaupon Holly |
This is like a scene from a horror movie for plants. This is the part where it’s nearly completely engulfed by the Ice-blob, and finally manages to stretch one small branch up and out of its icy clutches. But the the Ice-blob bloorps up a little bit of itself to smother the Yaupon’s last hope for freedom. This is the scene that makes little Yaupons want to sleep with the lights on, and make the Mommy Yaupon look under the bed and make sure there are no Ice-blobs hiding there.
So how did we get all of that ice all over our plants? With an ice-hose, of course.
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| A leaf's-eye view |
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| Trapped behind a wall of ice. Poor little plants. |
This is a new variety of Texas Mountain Laurel we’re working on. Gives you big clusters of ice-flowers all summer. They smell like orange blossoms and taste like a frozen margarita. You can either enjoy the flowers on the tree, or use them in your drink. We expect this to be one of our best sellers
Is it live or is it Memorex? Or is it just really blasted cold?
It was so cold the camera shutter stuck about halfway open. But it did make kind of a cool effect.
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| Is that a penny trapped under the ice? |
These little frozen blobs didn’t crunch like the frozen grass, but we couldn’t slide across them either. We just sort of hobbled across while trying not to fall down. Which was fun in its own way.
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| Jared's World |
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| Christina's World |
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| A frozen grass-blade's-eye view |
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| Ice-a-saurus sculpture |
Apparently wire fences stop ice formations. This is useful information.
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| Ice-Nessie |
Here are either reminders of the awful winter we all survived six months ago, or they’re images of relief while we all survive this awful summer. In which case, you’re welcome.
