Devestation

 

Gardening has brought me so much appreciation for things I wouldn't have imagined.  From bible verses to poetry to history that has come alive with new meaning.  Monday morning about 1 AM, our entire town was pummeled with golf ball size hail.  I don't know of a single neighborhood in our town of almost 10,000 that was spared.  My garden took quite significant damage but I am so thankful that I live in an era where there is a grocery store full of produce down the road.  I can't imagine how devastated I would have been to walk out and survey the damage if I had no other options for feeding my family.

I wrote to tell my grandmother about the storm and her response is so full of wisdom and a mindset sorely lacking in our country today I had to share:

I had missed the reports on hail in Tx.  I am so sorry. It is a devastating experience.  Have lived thru' several. One extremely bad when I was younger. We lost windows, siding, roofs and crops plus other things--School couldn't even start as it broke all the windows out of school also. At the time I did not fully realize my Dad's profound attitude. They had lost all their crops--our income for the year--Dad went out and checked the losses came in hugged Mom and said there's a lot of ice out there have you got some cream Ma--let's make ice cream. We kids went out gathered the hail stones and ice cream we had. A valuable lesson I have never forgotten   In those days we bought sugar and flour in 50 to 100#'s at a time. the rain water came in after the windows were all broken and ran on those supplies destroying them also.

Sadly, we lost one of our chickens.  Scared out of her mind (the very small chicken mind), she squeezed a hole in the chicken wire and escaped from the coop, only to be nearly immediately killed by the hail.  One of our cars was severely beaten but thankfully did not have broken windows.  Our roof will almost certainly need to be replaced, but it could have been so much worse.  I think of the town in Iowa that was nearly wiped off the map by a tornado and know I have much to be thankful for!

As for the garden, it took a severe beating.  My lettuce was nearly ready to harvest and it was pummeled to pieces.  The kids and I salvaged what we could and I picked out bits of gravel, twigs, mulch and who knows what else.  It was covered in dirt but after multiple washings it was edible and quite delicious.  We also lost most of the kale but were able to rescue some that was turned into several smoothies and a delicious side dish with dinner.  There were two broken off flowers from mutilated sunflowers came inside to add a little sunshine to the counter.  We did our best to make lemonade.

The floating row cover worked well for the small hail we had a few weeks ago.  I do think the tomatoes would have been a total loss if it had not been there, but as you can see, it is not effective against golf ball sized hail.

I had just planted these sunflowers a few days before.  Not too late to plant from seed.

The blackberries took a severe beating.  Nearly every branch is broken like this one.  If we get any berries, it will likely be about a third of what there would have been.

This was a new fruit tree I had picked up.  Hopefully it will recover.

We had already lost all of the peaches due to some late freezes after the fruit had set.  Now it appears we lost a better part of the tree.

All dents from the hail in a bag of mulch.

A close up of the damage to the floating row cover.  I think this one looks a little like it could be the face carved on a jack o lantern.

A baby pear from the neighbors pear tree.  I am sure that pear harvest will be minimal as well.

The dark dirt looking substance is huge piles of the shingle material that was beaten/washed off of our roof.  There are huge dents in the shingles and we have not climbed up there to inspect the chimney but I am certain it took quite a beating as well.

Leaves and twigs/branches are everywhere littering both the front and back yard.  The poor trees are looking rather bare.

 

Comments

[wanda]

Wow,indeed devastating damage. I love you grandmother's note and what a great attitude her dad had! Be sure to save that for the kids.

[Denise]

I'm so sorry about everything that you lost! I've only been in one bad hail storm, and, prior to that, I had no idea how much devastation it can cause. Your grandmother's note is full of wisdom and definitely something to remember in all trials.

[michelle]

I'm so sorry for your loss. This story reminds me of "The First Four Years" out of the Little House series. The first four years of Laura and Almanzo's marriage was very hard and most all of their hardships were caused by devastating weather. It sounds like your grandmother's story.

Indeed, there is so much for us to be thankful for in our times.