A Christmas Story - A snowy day in Louisiana

I've been wanting to put up a thread about outdoor Christmas trees for a while. However, I just don't feel like I have enough pictures of outdoor trees to constitute a thread. Instead I am posting this story about one person's outdoor Christmas tree.

Karla and her family aren't big into Christmas trees: "We didn't have a tree last year and we don't have one this year."
This may be making you wonder how she got on a Christmas tree blog. Well it all starts, "a few years ago, gosh maybe 8 or 9 years now, I bought two little Arizona cypress trees in small pots to put by the front door."

Everything was going dandy until; "Last year, Hurricane Gustav got it pretty badly, knocking it over and such. We had to trim the branches and stake it for a year to stabilize it."

While it was in a state of repair they decided to decorate it with ornaments and bows.
This is when the truly miraculous thing happened:

"We got a record (for south Louisiana) 8" of snow in one day."

Although the snow maybe have been stressing the already stressed Cyprus, Karla couldn't deny the beautiful Christmas charm the tree had and was possessed to take a few close-ups.

"I made all the bows, then added bells and stars, and a few suet feeders for the birds. "

While she was in awe with the circumstances her plants weren't exactly thrilled:

"Even though it was really amazing seeing so much snow this far south, I was mostly trying to save as many plants as I could. I have quite a lot of tropical plants that usually grow fine here, but they are not tolerant of snow and ice!"

Karla did a good job at saving most of her plants. Unfortunately, not all were so lucky:

"The papaya tree died after the snow - it couldn't tolerate weather that cold."

Sorry to hear about your Papaya tree Karla but thanks for sharing possibly the first and last snowstorm of Louisiana.

I just love Christmas stories.