Crazy Weather

Last night around 11 we woke to thunder and lightening. Within a few minutes, it sounded like our house was being buried in a load of crushed gravel. This is what we saw when we looked out our front door.

It was raining so hard we couldn't even see our neighbor's houses - we could just barely make out shapes. I immediately thought about my garden and was thankful it is mostly protected. These plants on my front porch were drenched, but missed the pelting of the hail thanks to our porch roof.


This was the view out our side door. The white is all hail, and it is floating in water. It rained so hard and so fast that it was like a river in our yard where it flowed off the roof. These pictures were taken after the heaviest rain subsided, and you can again see the neighbors' houses. If you look down toward the end of the side of the house you can see my big pot of petunias. They are droopy today, but they should be fine. Needless to say, I didn't have to water anything today ;) I think we must have had at least 2 inches of rain because my water table toy had that much in it this morning, and I always dump it at night. It really didn't rain that long either - maybe 15 minutes at the most. But then I guess it could have rained more throughout the night while we slept.

What really surprised me was that we still had piles of hail in our yard this morning. When I got up, I wanted to check on my plants right away, and this is what I found.

The hail is still a decent size even after sitting all night. This picture was taken at 6:45 am - almost 8 hours after the storm. I guess it goes without saying that it stayed pretty cool last night.

This was the biggest casualty I had. Not to bad for such a ferocious storm. This was in the frog pot out at the end of the sidewalk, not protected at all.

The tomatoes look a little battered but didn't loose any blossoms or fruit, so they should be fine.

My poor pink geranium suffered a little. I was such a lush beautiful abundance of blooms that I had moved it out a little so people could see it. The rain running off the roof of the garage poured directly onto it, and you can see the results. It's a good hardy plant though so it should spring back without a problem.

This is my poor sad frog pot with the broken piece laying on the ground next to it. Too bad. It was such a bright, pretty bloom.

The poppy seems just fine. I was really surprised by that because it was the least protected of anything and seems to have the least damage. The blooms are supposed to look like that. They are about to open. In fact this afternoon, there are three perfect beautiful flowers fully opened.