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Xanadu didn’t exactly skate through the freeze

Posted Feb 22, 2010 by Kim Franke-Folstad

Updated Feb 22, 2010 at 07:00 PM

Hate the song.

Love the plant.

So when my Xanadu philodendrons melted in January, The Horrible Month of Freezes, it was a sad, sad thing.

And it was a daunting task to clean up the mess. Left for last, of course.

The Xanadus are out in front and off to the side of the house, so it was easier to ignore them than some other things. But yesterday, I finally decided to see if anything could be saved.

And now I have an answer for Keith Driggers of Brandon, who e-mailed us a couple of weeks ago about his damaged Xanadus: Yes, there are signs of life under all those melted brown leaves!

At least my plants made it – they have sweet little leaves unfurling as we speak.

But if your yard is like mine, it’s gonna get worse before it gets better, Keith.

I decided to attack my Xanadus and get rid of all the brown. (If we have another freeze, they’re going to feel very bare – and angry – but I just couldn’t stop myself.)

I started with the clippers, then realized I could simply pull off most of the leaves and their stems. I just reached down to the bottom of the tougher stems and snapped them off at the trunk.

Now all that brown is gone, and the plants look pretty sad. Kind of like a fluffy poodle shaved down to nothing. You can see the trunks with their large oval leaf scars and the extensive roots that are usually hidden by leaves.

You also can see that the grass stopped growing underneath the plants where they overlapped the lawn.

Yes, they were that thick.

Like most of the plants in my garden, I’m convinced they’ll come back, but that corner sure looks terrible right now!

We made the most it, though, and my son, Ben, helped me clear out miles and miles of volunteer vines that have taken over that area. (Note the piles of debris in the photo. There are several more scattered around the front yard.)

Next week, we’ll put some color in there to fill in some of the gaps.