Rain, Rain, Rain...

It rained today. And yesterday. And a few days last week.  The clouds are low and the mountains invisible.

At least it is green now, which isn't quite as bad as the brown, muddiness of all the winter rains we had.

The yard seems to have turned into a series of small rivers and waterfalls. The creek has reached it's limit and overflowed.

The goats are cold. And wet. And pretty unhappy.

So are the chickens.  They sit on my milk stand in the shed, huddle in corners of the coop, or shiver in the goat's hay. Our top hat chickens look particularly pathetic.

 Not all of us are upset about the rain though. The ducks are having a wonderful time!

And tomorrow's forecast is rain. And the next day after that. I know in the summer, when it is hot and dry I will be wishing for rain. But for now, I am ready for it to move on and let the sun shine.

Hail Damage

Like most of the people in the country, I am getting a little tired of weather. Rain? Fine. Occasional thunderstorm? Fine. But enough with the tornadoes and flooding and winds and hail. We've had our fair share here- a tornado destroyed part of our community a few months ago, we spent the night in the hall with one warning after another, and today it was thunderstorm warnings. Usually I don't pay much attention to them, but with the weather being so wacky this year I watch a little more closely these days. And this is what came to us this afternoon:


The hail lasted between 5 and 10 minutes. It was mostly about quarter size with the occasional bigger one thrown in. The largest the boys found after the fact was about the size of a fifty cent piece. They were excited to watch it. We found the chicken hunkered down in the middle of yard amusing- I guess squatting as low as possible was better than running for cover. Once all was said and done I checked the animals- attempted to dry out the chicks whose cage was leaking, made sure the goats made it in to their shed and we headed on our way out the door.

And when we got home, after dinner, we made our way out back....

My poor, poor plants.

My cucumbers and zucchinis, which looked better than they have in years, are nearly shredded. Stalks split, leaves torn.

Even the fruits were hit.


The okra, beans, peppers all have holes or broken stems.


My bigger tomatoes seemed to weather the hail better than the smaller ones but there are lots of leaves and stems on the ground all around them.


The tomatoes will recover. And I am hoping that since this wacky weather seems to have affected the pest populations as well, my squashes will recover, if they can survive through the sun and heat tomorrow, that is.