Au revoir, Avocados

I may have lost my avocados to that crazy winter weather we had for 2 weeks and a bad series of assumptions and misunderstandings.

I learned that we were possibly going to have rolling blackouts one day, but it didn’t happen, so I figured the city had decided against it. They ended up starting in my area the next day at 7 in the morning. When my power went out, at first I assumed it was a controlled blackout. I went outside to look around, and when I opened my door, I was hit by a smell that reminded me of burning plastic or a burnt fuse. I didn’t think much of it until my neighbor pointed towards OSU and exclaimed “the power plant’s on fire!”. When I looked where she was pointing, I saw a massive white cloud near where I knew OSU’s substation was, and I immediately thought “that’s what that smell was”.

Since I now thought it wasn’t a controlled blackout, I started to panic, thinking about all the people who were going to be cold and without water as the water lines froze up. Immediately, I started filling all the jars I could and loading them into my car with all of my blankets and some canned food. I started my car to warm it up, and after packing everything else, I tried to quickly transfer my avocados to my car to keep them from freezing.

Unfortunately, with my warm-blooded body, I underestimated how cold air can be for a plant. The leaves showed signs of frost before I got my car dar open and they were wilting within minutes of warming in my car. I hoped it was temporary, but after power came back on and I transferred them back indoors, it was clear permanent damage had been done.

Over the next few days, they withered completely, turning brown and brittle and eventually falling off. Fortunately, they were all old enough to have woody centers, so their buds appear to have survived, but now I’m just waiting for them to slowly recover, hoping for the best.