What the Hail?

A view of all the things that blew off of the deck. In the background is the shed/chicken coop. I was thinking of sanding it down and repainting it this summer - it needed it. Well, the sanding is done - courtesy of the forceful hail!

We were pummeled last night by a hailstorm that pretty much looks like it destroyed the garden and hay crop. We're praying the hay will revive, but right now it's just laying down on the ground, smushed. The boys were planning to cut it today because it looked like it was finally dried out enough from the last week's rain to do it. Then this. I'm trying to stay positive, especially about the garden. But It doesn't look like there's much left. Our corn was finally a couple of inches high and we had nice little green rows of peas, beans, carrots, beets & radishes. I can't see any green in the garden now, except for the bits that I know are underneath the 5 milk jugs covering the 5 tomato plants that by some miracle, survived. The rest of my 20+ tomatoes look like they're gone. The only thing left of my pepper plants are the stems sticking up out of the ground. No leaves, no baby peppers (yes, I had 2 or 3). And my few squashes that weren't drowned in the last couple of weeks by all the moisture didn't make it through the storm last night. I'm trying to decide right now whether to try to replant some things with stuff from the nursery or just give up. It would be easier to not worry about it, especially with 8 weeks left of the pregnancy. But it is so nice to have fresh garden veggies, not to mention how excited I was to put up some salsa and other stuff for the year. Sigh.

We were fortunate that our car was not damaged in any way. Or that we had any broken windows in the house. Our neighbor's window broke while she was watching the storm out of it, and she was lucky to not be hurt. The front door has huge dings in the paint where you can see the metal door shining through, and the west windows (that's the direction the hail came from) have the plastic casings in complete shambles and the screens are all shot.

View of the back door before I shoveled away about 1 foot of hail. I couldn't open it from inside and had to go around from the front.

Front door view from outside.

View out of the front door from inside.

Many of our trees are at least 1/2 leafless. Notice the bits of leaf stuck to the window - they were whipped off of the tree there and blown back onto the house.

The kids were fascinated by the "gumball storm" (we've recently seen the move "Bedtime Stories.") I made them stay back from the windows while the hail came down but then let them go look while it was still raining. Notice Clayton's hat - I discussed his obsession with it in a previous post.

My poor flower bed.

My once lush, beautiful and thriving rhubarb plant. I even had the the thought yesterday afternoon, "I should pick all that, cut it up and freeze it today." I didn't. It's now in shreds.