Last Wednesday, my husband and I found ourselves outside in the cold, dark, early evening hours desperately trying to prop up our two white birch trees that were drooping onto the ground.

The ice had cocooned the branches into glistening, sagging limbs that felt as if they each weighed 50 pounds. By the time we finished performing our makeshift attempt at thwarting further damage, the yard looked like an art project gone terribly wrong. Later that evening we ventured out on a walk and found many neighbors had been struggling with tree headaches of their own.

I called Mulford’s Tree Service to get some expert advice on mine and my neighbors’ predicament. Newton Mulford has owned and run Mulford’s Tree Service for 30 years and has seen his fair share of damage caused by ice storms.

“As far as damage goes, this storm doesn’t hold a candle to the one we had a few years ago,” he said.

Well, I thought, at least there is SOMETHING to be grateful for, but what about my birch trees?

He suggested I wait until the ice melted and then remove the ladders and pieces of wood we had used to hoist the trees into place, adding, “Sometimes they will retain the droop, but many times the trees’ trunk tissue hasn’t been stretched so the trees should rebound just fine.”

Another suggestion was to try weight reduction to reshape the tree after the thaw. Massive loads of ice have pulled and stretched branches, and trimming excess heaviness off the tips of branches can help the limbs spring back into place. Mulford stressed that this is a case-by-case solution, however, and is not necessarily the appropriate answer for every tree.

“It is a matter of being patient,” he said. “Some trees will recover quite quickly, and others, you won’t see the damage until later.”

“But how will I know if I see damage?” I asked.

Newton Mulford, owner of Mulford's Tree Service, prunes limbs from a large oak tree damaged during last week's ice storm.

“The breaks are pretty obvious,” Mulford said. “There could be center splitting down the middle of the branches, which may not be apparent for a few months. There also may be some horizontal cracks in the branches, which is when the tree’s tissue is expanded at the top and compressed at the bottom.

“The time to prune is now, when the tree is in a dormant state, but be extremely cautious not to trim back too far into the viable tissue.”

Determining where to prune depends on where the break is on a tree limb. If the break is in the middle of a branch, prune to the next healthy limb the branch intersects with. If the damage extends into the main stem, it may be cleaned up through pruning, but if the destruction is too severe, further reduction may be needed a few months down the road.

The trees that Mulford Tree Service can always count on suffering extensive damage during ice storms are Bradford pears and silver maples.

“Those two tree varieties do not hold up well under icy conditions and uniformly suffer when a storm like this hits,” Mulford said.

If you plan on reinforcing a tree — as I plan to do with my birch trees — Mulford offers the following suggestion:

“If you use mechanical supports to shore up weak stems, such as wires and ropes, be sure to check them twice a year and physically move them every other year so you do not choke the tree or allow the tree to grow around and over those supports.”

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my beautiful white birch trees survive this weighty experience and that I am better prepared when the next ice storm comes calling.