Arlene - I hope your home and garden are okay. And I hope your power has been restored.
I discovered that I had lost the majority of my hummingbird/butterfly small trees/shrubs and one of my rose arbors which were all in my backyard.
I've spent 2 days doing clean-up in the backyard and still have much more to do. After realizing that the blooming shrubs and small trees were lost, I immediately hung out my hummingbird feeders. Thank goodness because I had hummers show up almost immediately after putting the feeders up outside. The wind was still whipping, but I knew the little hummingbirds could not survive without nectar for very long. They are regular visitors to the feeders now, since most of the blooming plants had the flowers blown off or the entire plants were damaged all around my community. My husband and I today started replacing the arbor posts with metal poles. I had to cut the climbing roses
And at the end of the day, I remember all the other birds and squirrels that I regularly feed and put up the bird feeders again. Geez .... I don't know why I didn't even think of them. I was so bummed out by all the backyard plant damage that I just started cleaning up immediately while the hurricane outer bands were still hitting my area.
I now have a HUGE pile of debris in my front yard waiting for the waste management to pickup. Some of the small trees and shrubs will grow back because the base was not destroyed, but the most favorite small tree that all the birds love is gone. Snapped in half during the storm. The backyard looks somewhat bare now with so much missing. Luckily, my 2 large oaks trees only lost small branches and lots of leaves. No other damage to them.
None of the daylilies were damaged from what I can tell. All the ones in pots were moved under the plumbago shrubs which offered protection. All the daylilies in the ground were fine. It appears all the low plants were fine. What a mess the backyard was though.
