Unintention

I call it wrath-of-God hail, because the force of it hitting the roof is too much, I think, at the time, to be explained by gravity alone.  The ice pellets seem to be shot from a gun, or hurled by an almighty arm with a wicked overhand pitch.  I don't quite pray for it to stop, but occasionally notice myself pleading to a hail storm to leave us be.  Wind makes me testy.  "Enough already," I think at it. "If you have so much energy, go find some turbines to spin."  (Though never when it's giving me a push up the eastern slope of the valley.)  With hail I am utterly submissive.  Why?

It's not unusual in the summer here to feel the wind pick up suddenly around supper time.  The environment changes rapidly:  a rumble of thunder, a noticeable chill, a huge charcoal grey cloud,seemingly out of nowhere, looms over the elm and green ash trees that line our street.  These are hit or miss situations.  There might be a sudden downpour.  Could be a tornado brewing.  Maybe it will keep calm and carry on to give a good thrashing to Coaldale.  Possibly it will fire hail at us.

The evening of June 19 it was a hit.  P had warned me in the morning that "golf-ball hail" was in forecast.  That was good of her, because it prompted me to throw many of the old bed sheets (frost inhibitors) from the greenhouse over the most prized and/or tender vegetable plants - tomatoes, peppers, zucchinis.   The golf-ball hail did not materialize.  That's fine.  Cultivated-blueberry hail is devastating enough for us.  Barry was outdoors, managing his rainwater retention system, when the first hailstones hit.  Nasty pointy chunks of ice, unlike the smooth spherical hail we were taught in Grade 3.  Even the World's Greatest Rain Poncho couldn't protect him and he soon sought shelter in the house.  We listened to the drilling on the roof and watched in awe as a great mass of projectiles streaked earthward.

After a few very long minutes, the precipitation changed to a less alarming liquid state.  We went back out to assess the damage.

We had just begun to harvest lettuce for salads, so this was disappointing.  I hadn't even been worried about the lettuce, probably thinking it would enjoy the cool, wet conditions.






I did worry about tomatoes.  They were covered with sheets, but the sheets were just draped over the stakes and cages in place to support the plants and were not secured in any way.  They had begun to blow around and exposed some of the plants by the time hail hit.  This was the worst of them; most sustained very few injuries.

Costata romanesca zucchinis were still small at the time, so some spare border fencing was enough to keep their protective sheet from weighing to heavily on them.  They were barely aware of the violence that surrounded them.


The most surprising devastation was the Swiss-cheese style adopted by Rhubarb.  I had expected it to be tougher.  Even the stalks were badly wounded where they were hit.  Had to put a hold on those great breakfast smoothies.




Bean leaves were ripped and bines knocked free of their poles.  Corn stalks were rather festive with leaves all shredded lengthwise like fancy party streamers.  Squash plants were flattened and baby bunches of grapes lay limp on the concrete floor of the grape grotto.  A pane of glass was smashed out of the greenhouse roof.  Hosta leaves were irreparably fractured.

We were the fortunate ones.  Within a day, to the north of us, the same storm system had washed out highways and bridges and destroyed houses.  It was the type of disaster that could be a season highlight on "Nature's Savage Fury" (or some such show) on TLC.  Of course, there was no fury on Nature's part, any more than a wrath-stricken God was shooting ice pellets at us.  It's just physics; one event leads to another.

Roads and houses don't rebuild themselves, but plants do.  Less than three weeks later, most of the garden had grown up out of the wreckage, making perfect new leaves that hid the mangled ones.  Then it hailed again, and again, somewhat less forcefully.  The plants are wounded, but they just keep growing.  Why wouldn't they?  There is a metaphor there about the human spirit, but that's for someone else to find because I think comparing people to plants is fairly stupid.

Lesson learned - covering our most treasured plants before hail arrived was worth the effort.  Weather is without intention.  I have the capacity for intention and might as well exercise it when it can make a difference.


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