Hail, Hail, It All Fell Here!

This afternoon, as I was preparing to go out to pull bindweed and cut down elm seedlings the clouds got dark gray and threatening, wind began to blow, rain to fall, and hail began to clatter on the roof. I started watching it from the front door and then hurried to get my camera. It kept me running from frontdoor to backdoor, taking photos and videos, as the rain and hail got heavier and heavier. The noise was deafening. ChoCho sat up from his nap on my bed and looked with alarm toward the window. Oh no! My poor garden!





Please check these photos against those I just posted earlier today.

Scene from the sliding glass door of the sunporch.

My corn and pumpkin patch, taken 4 hours later; the hail still hasn't all melted.

Joe came in and told me that the raccoons wouldn't eat the corn this year.

These were going to grow baby pumpkins for the kids for Halloween.
The Black Eyed Susans survived the falling limb but not the hail.

This is almost more than a poor old Granny's heart can take; what's left of Evan's beautiful sunflower.

But, as I told Joe, it's not as if we had to make our living from these plants, like the farmers do. [As a kid I saw what hail did to farmers and that is why I refused to date the farm boys and end up watching each storm with fear that there would be no harvest that year. I didn't realize that you can take the girl off the farm, but you can't keep her from loving to dig in the dirt.] We can clean up the mess and enjoy what remains. Our cars and house survived because these were not the golf ball or baseball sized hail stones that have fallen recently in other parts of Colorado. This is part of the gamble that every tiller of the soil makes each year. Some years you win and some you lose, but the rewards to being a tiller of soil are worth the risk.