i was in a hurry ... dave is correct... anything that is broken... may as well be pruned below the break ... the remainder of the branch will pop back up ... some what .... i was thinking something like a crossbow.... wood bends ... when stressed... but retain is straightness when the stress is removed .... and these can do that TO SOME EXTENT ... any tree.. not just conifers or these ... by roping.. i mean some heavy twine ... tractor supply ... 2500 feet for 20 bucks... loose ring at the bottom.. and go around and around as high as you can go.. then back down ... how they used to tie xmas trees to put on your car ....binding it all together will allow it to TRY to support itself ... then wait for spring.. and release one .. and see what shape they have .... a new post.. a few pix.. and we can come to some decision whether they are salvageable or not ... in general ... a bare branch on a conifer is dead .. ANY GREEN will allow the branch to continue life ... the issue is how many years before you are pleased with the appearance ... if you plan to remove them.. and replace them ... start with small stock ... with SINGLE leaders... to avoid the splaying... i doubt you will find large stock as such ... an IN YOUR LIFETIME storm is hard to be proactive with ... they are just going to happen ... and there isnt much to do about it ... except whine and complain afterwards .... this storm would have probably also damaged single leader plants .... good luck ken

Same storm, Ken. I think Hillsdale county got it even worse, as we were without power for six days. Yup, our place. I hate those elms. It took me a year to get all the limbs from that storm cleaned up and burned. I would replace those elms with cataplas or P. abies 'Cranstonii' if allowed. The only non-conifers that did well through all that were our huge cottonwoods. Those pines grew more that following spring than I had ever seen before. They definitely dealt with the ice a lot better than they did this past year's heat/drought.

Randy, That ice storm is one of my worst memories. Our electricity went off Christmas night, and we lost all power for EIGHT days. We were also without water for ELEVEN days since we are on a water well. Our house *had* central heat which needed electricity to run it. So all we had for heat was a "Mr. Heater" that attached to our propane grill bottle. With 15-20 animals, it was too dangerous to leave them here alone. We had to camp out in the bedroom with that tiny heater. Our 55 gallon aquarium froze 2/3 of the way. Our toilets froze. Every water pipe burst. We had a tree limb stuck through the guest bedroom window. It was so cold in the house with no heat that the broken window didn't matter. We were unbelievably miserable. Our Koi pond froze over when the electricity went out, and we had two trees down on top of it. Every Koi in the pond died. After seven days we got a motel room for a much needed shower. I will never forget that ice storm as long as I live, and I hope I never see another one that severe. Our area was the worst hit in the state. We lost hundreds of trees and have still not cleaned up all the damage to the trees and fences. Our place looked like a war zone when all the ice melted. I HATE winter!!

Kim, Hooray for the miraculous recovery. I had a lemon garden for a couple of years and it was one of the most fun things I've ever done. It was so fun to hunt down all the plants that had lemon scents, lemon colors and lemony names. I still have my potted lemon tree. Don't forget Lemon Boy tomato for your lemon garden! Hazel, There are people who take theme gardens to extremes that I never would, but that is partly because I grow so many edibles. Many (though not all) theme gardens are built around a backbone of small trees, shrubs and perennials that fit the theme, with annuals as needed. Within the confines of growing an edible garden with only a few perennials on the edges, I have grown rainbow gardens many times---where each raised bed featured one color of the rainbow, in the same order that the colors appear in the rainbow. I did that for 4 or 5 years and it really broadened my exposure to veggies, herbs and flowers of every color. Of course, the colors green and blue were the most challenging as this was well before we had actual blue tomatoes, but I still grew an old heirloom variety of tomato called "Blue" though it certainly did not have blue fruit. It had fruit that was blackish-pinkish-purplish and wasn't worth eating either. I'd like to do it again sometimes, but it does take an enormous amount of planning, plus an enormous amount of seed-starting to have plants from every color of the rainbow. Still, I'm glad I did it. I'd never grown many green flowers before that (only Envy zinnia) and found it fun to grow Bells of Ireland, Green Wizard rudbeckia and green-flowering gladiolus. I was younger then and had a lot more energy and spent a lot more time in the garden in the heat of the summer. I've also grown a Chocolate Garden at times, featuring plants that produced dark flowers, dark foliage or dark produce (Chocolate popcorn, chocolate tomatoes like Cherokee Chocolate and Chocolate Stripes, Chocolate Habanero peppers, etc), dark colored flowers (basically dark red or maroonish flowers that could sort of pass for chocolate), and chocolate-scented flowers. Just thinking about all the work I did with those theme gardens in those years makes me tired now. I wonder where I found the energy back then? Dawn