Winter 2017 nearly had me climbing onto my own roof with a ladder to save a palm tree.
I'd had that windmill palm in the ground since 2008, my first one, the palm that started this whole obsession. By 2017 it had done something I hadn't really planned for. It grew. Nine winters of surviving in Wisconsin had turned it from a scrawny thing I could wrap in an afternoon into a specimen tall enough that my usual box and cover routine couldn't reach the top anymore. I had a ladder out in the yard that November, standing at the base of the palm, staring up at fronds I could no longer touch, trying to figure out how to seal off the last few feet before the cold really set in.
The plan I landed on was not a good one. Get the ladder up onto the roof. Climb from up there instead of from the ground. In hindsight it's the kind of idea that sounds reasonable at eight at night in November when you've already sunk nine years into a plant and can't stand the thought of losing it to something as dumb as "I couldn't reach."
My fiancee, now my wife, said absolutely not. No roof, no ladder, not for a palm tree. She didn't argue about drainage or hardiness zones. She just told me maybe it would make it through the winter on its own, since it was so well established by then. I knew that probably wasn't true. Nine years in the ground doesn't mean much once the protection system that got you those nine years stops fitting the plant. But I leaned into it anyway, because the alternative was a ladder on a roof in a Wisconsin winter, and that math wasn't close.
The palm died that winter, more or less the way I expected. No protection reaching the top meant no real chance. I still think about that loss more than almost any other plant I've lost, not because the palm itself was rare or expensive, but because of what it taught me. Sometimes the plant outlasts your protection system. You build something that works for a while, and then the thing you're protecting grows right past it, and you have to be honest about that before it costs you more than a palm.
I replanted in 2023. That one is pushing six feet now, wrapped every fall in an insulated box with a real air gap and real heat, and this past spring it came through with zero spear damage for the first time ever. No scaffolding required. No roofs involved. Just a system actually built to fit the plant instead of a ladder and a bad idea.
I don't regret losing the first one. I regret how close I came to matching its fate.
Until next time,
— Tim
