Marian Anderson, a 73-year-old resident of Manchester, N.J., is having problems trying to find a crew with enough time to remove two old oak trees that fell in her yard during a nor'easter last weekend.
"They tell me they're swamped and will get out as soon as they can, but who knows when that will be," she said. "I really hated this winter; I truly did. It caused nothing but trouble."
Seeing their snowiest winters on record were cities including Baltimore, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Del., Washington and Atlantic City, N.J. Heavy rains in recent weeks caused major flooding across the mid-Atlantic region. Hurricane-strength winds joined forces with heavy rains last month to make yards messy in New England.
"It has been a remarkable winter. One of the stormiest, if not the stormiest on record. It has impacted everyone," New Jersey state climatologist David Robinson said Friday, the day before the official start of spring. "People will be talking about this 20 years from now."
All that adds up to trees and shrubs that either died, are clinging to life or need some spiffing up. And that means tree removal firms and landscapers are being crunched for services but seeing green.
Teresa Fredette, bookkeeper at Knowles Tree Service in North Hampton, N.H., said the 25-year-old company "was never busier" than after the Feb. 25 storm.
"We brought on a full extra crew within the first two days of the storm," she said. "We actually still have them working with us because there are still people calling who knew their situation wasn't an emergency, but still had a lot of damage that they want cleaned up.
"We actually still have a couple of people that have a tree on their house," she said.
In western Pennsylvania, where Pittsburgh also had one of its snowiest winters on record, most landscaping companies would usually be doing spring cleaning work, such as mulching flower beds or getting yards ready for graduation parties.
They're still doing that this year - but they're a couple of weeks behind because there's still so much snow on the ground in spots.
Plantscape, a Pittsburgh company that maintains commercial properties for more than 150 clients, is about two weeks behind but expects to make more money than normal for the season, sales manager Chuck Croskey said.
"We had a lot of tree damage, a lot of tree pruning and guying up of the trees," he said. "For a week or so, that's all we've been doing is tree work."
He foresees a lot of turf repairs, too, from snow plows damaging the edge of lawns.
