A Year Ago Today

Last year at this time, we had a monster of a hail storm. I took pictures of the event. The hail looked like snow in places and took several days to melt. The damage it did was tremendous for plants and trees.  

  That's our intersection. Those who have been reading this blog will recognize that intersection from all my snow pictures. 

 I took this to show how deep the hail was--you can see the ruts. 

 I took this two hours after the hail storm passed. If you look at the upper left of the picture, you can see the storm clouds hovering.  

 That was our backyard--several inches deep in hail. 

 Our lilac bush was damaged badly in the storm. Many trees on the block suffered from tremendous damage from this storm. 
                                     
  The morning after the storm was cold. Hail littered the yards along with the leaves and branches from trees and bushes.

This afternoon, it grew dark, similar to last year. I finished my email communications with my students, shut down my computer, and waited to see if we would have another hail storm. Shortly after I did that, the sky turned black and I decided to suffer from the heat--and shut all the windows. Then a storm began. 

At first I breathed a sigh of relief because while there was hail, it was smaller than pea-sized and infrequent. I was worried about my garden as we had just planted pepper plants and petunias this week. By the time I finished my sigh, the hail came more frequently and grew to marble sized. I hurried and gathered my supplies of gallon-sized ziplock bags, barbecue skewers and the big umbrella we've never used. I went out the back door. Immediately, I was pelted by the hail, despite the protection of the umbrella.

Now I've been in hail storms  before. There was the summer I worked for the Youth Conservation Corps and was caught out in a hail storm on a mountain top. But I was rescued before it got too bad. Then there was the time I got caught in the parking lot with my son. The car was only seconds away so it wasn't that bad. There was last May when I was photographing the storm. 

But today, I felt each and every hail that battered into me. All I could say was "OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!" over and over again. I wanted to protect the pepper plants so I went into the hail storm voluntarily. Those plants are producing food for me. It's kind of that nurturer syndrome that affects some of us. I have it bad at times. Most of the times I can control it. And I say that, knowing full well I'm lying through my teeth. 

Anyway--I managed to get them covered with only a few leaves shredded. The petunias were a different story. The front yard flowers had to take their chances. 

 The columbine did ok...not as bad as I feared. Of course it wasn't as bad as last year's storm--thankfully! 

 The African Daisy took a shredding as did the Blanket Flower. 

  We lost a few leaves off the trees, but luckily, it wasn't as bad as last year's storm.  I realize that we're not out of May yet--but I'm hoping I don't have to worry about another bad hail storm. Of course, this is New Mexico. You know what they say about our weather:  if you don't like it--stick around a few minutes--it's bound to change!