Hail Sucks

While the Professor and I spent the afternoon registering, blissfully scanning cookware, spatulas, and a panini maker at Williams Sonoma, it was hailing and storming at our house. My sister called us up to tell us not to hurry home, because of the storm.

I planted a garden a couple of weeks ago.

Every day I get home and water it, and here lately my after-work mood has been determined by how healthy and strong my plants are looking.  The beans were up to my knee, the corn to my shins, and the peas were just starting to latch onto the latticework I put up for them.  We would have been eating fresh veggies in a month or so.  Today my garden is a sea of broken stalks and shredded leaves.  My pot of oregano, which was full of two inch high, thick and aromatic shoots is just a pot full of dirt and hail stones, with some green potpurri scattered around it.  The little potted purple flowers I have on my front stairs are destroyed.  My beans, my crawling peas, my squash, are all flattened – it’s almost comical, like they were pressed between pages of a book or something.  The hail drove some of the shoots back under the ground.  The corn for the most part survived, though it is drooping, but my window box herb garden is gone.

Sigh.  I try not to gripe and moan here, because I want to be uplifting.  But my life has been a sea of stress, and only my garden and my lunchtime gym trips have really gotten my blood pressure to normal.  It’s hard to explain if you don’t garden – but it is supremely disappointing, and also I feel a responsibility for these little plants that I coaxed into the world, and now I feel like I’ve allowed harm to come to them. So much of my life right now is completely anti-me – what with the office job, not driving my truck, working long days and spending no time outside or physically active.  The garden has been the place where I step back into my old self again.  It will come back, and I saved some seeds so I can definitely re-plant.  It isn’t the end of the world, but I feel really bad right now.

On the bright side – like I said, I do have some leftover seeds, so I can start over with the window box.  And we registered for some neat stuff today, and haven’t fought at all on what to pick!  And the corn is doing just fine, and a few of the beans and peas may come back.  I hope so.  Also, I am going to Vegas next weekend to a friend’s bachelorette party, and that should be lots of fun.  There are many things to look forward to.  And the shreds of my plants will become compost for the ones that made it, and maybe make them stronger.  Right?

Thanks for listening.  I feel better already.