BEFORE THE STORM, my children and I carried the potted plants indoors. We emptied the linen closet onto the floor and hauled the contents to the yard, where we wrapped the citrus trees in sheets and covered the cactus with a thin blanket. My husband wrapped the trunk of the peach tree in a sleeping bag. That evening, we played a board game and ate stew. My children went to bed excited that—for only the third time in their lives—they might wake up to a little snow.
In the morning we indeed had a little snow on the ground, a “skiff” as we would have called it back home in Missouri. The light was thin and gray, the sky a little overcast, and because the power had gone out during the night, the house was already cold. The cell phone towers were also out of commission, so we had no cell service and very little information. The
