Nuclear Holocaust

Ouch. Yeah, that wind did a job on my hard work. This was probably (maybe) the most effort I've put into a garden, and to see it go up in smoke (wind?) is really hard. I don't know how farmers and others dealt with such hardships before crop insurance and such. Early in their marriage my great-grandparents had to pack up and leave an area after an early frost destroyed the apple harvest that year. Thankfully I don't have to pack up and leave. Though I'm tempted to aim for a less windy climate...

I took some pictures a day or two before the wind hit. Wasn't my garden coming along beautifully?





Notice the happy little chicken house behind the garden.

So nice...











Here are some larger pictures of some of the plants I was so proud of.






In the foreground is a row of gourds, then my heirloom tomatoes, then varieties of peppers. All carefully planted and soaker-hoses added carefully! I wish I had stock in that company...


























The miniature indian popcorn! How exciting!







The fancy beets.

A sunflower sprout; "Infrared Mix" from Burpee, I think.




























The chickens now have a ... patio? Breezeway? I'm not sure what the point is in having this structure at all now...
The chicken house wasn't the only house that suffered damage!


We don't really get tornados here. I don't know what it would be like to wake up to the kind of destruction that can tear your house up and throw your cars away. But even so, tossing the carpet I had so carefully laid was no small feat. There were even soaker-hoses whose u-shaped clips had been yanked from the soil. Some of the carpet was tossed up onto the (not-electrified) poultry netting, making a wonderful avenue for lots of chickens to maraud the seedlings that had survived the wind. Big Red didn't want to cooperate in going back over the fence, and with bare arms and legs I was reluctant to get too close. I ended up using my slippered foot to kick and launch him back up and over. Obnoxious rooster.
Below is one of my fancy, heirloom, started-from-seed tomatoes I have been so careful to nurture. This is one of the hardest things; you can't just go find Mortgage Lifter starts at the local greenhouse.

A (formerly) beautiful tall pepper plant. Not sure which breed these were, but 80% of what is out there is "exclusively" bred for whatever seed company; also not sure you can buy those at the local greenhouse. And peppers need an exorbitant amount of time from germination to harvest, so there will be no trying again from seed.