Friday, April 17, 2009

It looks like Perlite Beach...


..but if you know your precipitation, then you'll already know that it's more like hailstone bitch. Yes I said it, having spent the better part of the day replanting yet more seed containers and cleaning up the mess from last night's mayhem. A lot of shredded leaves and dispirited peach blossoms [cue Chopin's Funeral March]. I'm surprised that the tulips were only slightly bruised, because the sky simply opened up around 11:15 Thursday night and unburdened itself of gazillions of tiny frozen pebbles (a mere 1/4 inch in diameter) along with the pouring rain. My husband and I have never seen anything like this so early in the season; it was such that the lawn and terrace looked to be covered in snow! My dragon tongue bean plants, a single red kuri and all of my shishigatani squashes pounded to the ground. Even a couple of very young tomato plants, the black krims, had nothing left of themselves except a pathetic wisp of a main stem.

Reality check...if it were hailing down minuscule alien embryos then we'd really be in trouble, now wouldn't we?

Average daytime temperature: 11°C / 52°F

6 comments:

Sue Swift said...

Wow - we had a storm yesterday evening, but nothing like that. Just growly thunder and a bit of rain. I said to my husband too that it was early in the year for weather like that, but after the high temperatures of the last few days and then the sudden drop back to normal, it seemed inevitable.

But I'm so sorry - it must be heartbreaking. But at least it's early enough in the season to start again. I hope you'd not used up all your seeds?

our friend Ben said...

Happened to us a few weeks ago, Rowena! What can you say but "GRRRRR!!!!" But at least it wasn't the ice-cube-sized hail that wrecked my hostas and the roof of our henhouse last year. Small mercies! Sorry about your poor 'Dragon Tongue' beans and all the other pounded plants, though!

K and S said...

OMG! that is awful! hope you still have some seedlings.

Fern Driscoll said...

That is sooo discouraging. Isn't it supposed to be 'spring' along about now?? We had hail yesterday (Friday) off and on - but not as damaging as yours. Hope you have seeds and time enough to re-do.

Rowena said...

Sue - I have an ample supply of seeds, but the funny thing is that when this [hail] happened, the first thing I thought to do was to purchase even more! A sure sign of "spending to make one happy" or better yet, seed hoarding! ;-)

Our friend Ben - I'm sure that I was mumbling grrrrr in between the b*tches. So far I haven't experienced hail bigger than a 1/2-inch around, so I count my blessings. This weekend protective netting goes up!

Kat - I should have more of everything ready to transplant in about 6 weeks. It's just the waste of time and energy that makes me mad -- and here I thought my worst enemy would be Mister B. I should've thought about Mother Nature :-[

Fern - I'm already on it as far as sticking more seeds into soil, but the next time I'm putting up the protective netting when the seedlings are transplanted into the ground. What's next? A swarm of locusts?? :-O

chaiselongue said...

Sorry to hear about the storm damage. The weather is very strange this year. There have been hailstorms near here too, although we've been lucky enough not to suffer .... yet.