A Hail of A Spring Storm

The garden looked pretty good when the Kitchen Garden post went up on Wednesday morning, but by that evening it was a pitiful sight! Around 6 PM Wednesday a major hailstorm hit parts of Austin and our neighborhood was on the hit list. If you read the comments on the last post you know that some hailstones were 2 and 1/2 inches in diameter. Hail dented my car, destroyed the patio umbrella, did some damage to the house and covered our streets and yards in shredded small branches and leaves. So no catastrophe, just a lot of stuff that needs addressing. An interesting thing happens when you are a blogger - sometimes you can avoid panic in an unpleasant situation by going into reporter mode and picking up the camera. That's why we have video taken during the storm and photos afterward. We made this YouTube so you can share the excitement. (If you can't see a video image to click below, try going right to our YouTube station Kaefka



Pam/Digging gave me some African aloe last year and one pot had put up a bloom stalk. The flower was chopped off and just look at the impact craters on the plant!


The magnolia has lost about 1/4 of its leaves...and some of them now have windows in them.

The tree itself is probably okay but will look raggedy for awhile.

The ground under the loquat is covered in leaves and knocked-down fruit, but the tree itself just bent and blew.

Both Philo and I have friends who were driving home from work when the storm grew strong - several of them had windshields shattered as they drove, which must have been terrifying.
I'm sure we'll all be cleaning and repairing for awhile. Hmmm....the Zilker Garden Festival takes place this weekend in Central Austin - maybe we'd better go there and pick up a few replacement tomato plants.