Sunflowers down, sunflowers down.

This is a little story about how you should be careful what you think about. A few weeks ago I was thinking random thoughts while doing something else, and I said to myself, "Gee, maybe planting the sunflower seeds straight in the ground is the way to go. We have not had a single sunflower fall over this year."

A few days later, another one of windy, blustery storms came through. The next day I walked outside to collect some Chinese 5 color peppers and I saw this outside. 

And everyone hit the ground

As usual, none of the stems broke. One small set of roots pulled slightly out, but not by much, and with the fact the ground was so saturated with water, we were pretty sure we could just push it back down and it would be fine. 

Hi fence, how are you

Some of the sunflowers were laying on the neighbor's fence. Fortunately, they are very nice people and were understanding. They had a few of their own plants go falling over in the storm. The sunflowers themselves seemed in decent shape, even if they were a bit droopy. A day or 2 later (after we bought some more poles) we were able to stand most of them back up. In a day or two I will post the 1st of the month pictures for October, and you can see how we supported them for what little remains of the growing season.

Broken Broccolli

During a morning walk down of the garden the other day, I saw this small broccoli plant laying on its side. Completely. Well, I grabbed it and it turns out something caused it to break off its roots. It had a small floret of broccoli. We decided to harvest it and it made a decent snack. 

Broccoli down

When I looked at the end of it, I think it just broke off. What would of caused it to break off, I have no idea. However, I don't plan to find out anytime soon. I sometimes think I need to put a video camera outside at night to show us what is going on, but then I realize I am probably better off not knowing. I will leave it a mystery. Pooka decided to blame Bugs (the bunny) and happy moved on to more important things, like if her carrots are ready to be pulled.

the broken end of the plant

HAIL

Today was an easy day to decide what to post about. I had plenty of options, how big was the overdue harvest, how to harvest garlic (and the results of our late year attempt), or even, what is the status of the strawberry project or the coriander drying.

Something happened yesterday that Pooka and I decided was a bit more interesting/immediate. You see last night we had a thunderstorm. A nice, loud and very wet storm, that had included HAIL. Yes, Hail, in August. I was a bit shocked myself, so I took a picture of it after it had ended. 

Do you see what I see? 

Now while that picture does not show very well the fact that the deck was COVERED in hail, or the pots were holding nice little ice balls to melt into them (more free water). This picture was taken about 5 minutes after the hail stopped when I could even open the door in the rain for a quick picture.

After the storm passed, I went outside to survey the damage before Pooka could. I was worried she would get upset if it was in too bad a shape. This is the first sign of damage I saw. Doesn't look to bad right?

Not too bad. 

Bigger, but not too bad

 Then I looked at the broccoli. It had a bit bigger hole that I noticed right away.

Holes....

 Once I looked at the largest part of the cucumber plants, I saw the real damage. Leaves were shredded or cut in half. The vines had fallen from their spots, but I knew I could fix that the next day. The damage wasn't too horrid, but it gave me a chance to talk to Pooka about what hail is, and why it can be so damaging.

Swiss cheese leaf

It tore it in twain....

Floppy limb

 The tomatoes initially looked much worse from inside. They had blown over a bit, and upon further inspection, there are some bent or broken limbs, and alot of cherry tomatoes on the ground (anyone up for hunt the green tomato), but other then that, they seemed to hold up okay.

A casuality of the hail. 

As far as property damage, we got by without any real damage. Pooka lost one butterfly (Daddy isn't sure he can fix it) and one Dragonfly lost it's wing which was then broken in half. The house and the car had no real damage, but yeah, here is a quick reminder of how Mother Nature can turn on you.




Although, on a positive note: I will always remember listening to Brother and Pooka talk out the back window to Thor and tell him to calm down and that throwing tantrums and ice isn't going to solve anything.