ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Yesterday it was a nice day and I was itching to be outside on my balcony doing gardening stuff. I figured, "Hey, it's May 7. May 9 is the 'last frost date' here, after which it's safe to have plants outside. That's only two days away and the weather's been warm, so why not move all my plants outside and let them get some sunshine rather than the grow light?"
So I moved them all outside, placed on the floor at one end of the balcony so I could block Connor from reaching them.
And then this morning, there was... a fucking HAILSTORM.
A HAILSTORM. WTF.
And of course it was coming from exactly the right slanted direction to go *in* to the balcony rather than being blocked by the balcony above. And of course the far end of the balcony, where the plants were, was the side the hail was able to reach.
Almost all the plants I had been lovingly nurturing under the grow light for the past 6-8 fucking weeks, as well as the Russian heirloom tomato plant that I bought last week and planted yesterday, have been severely damaged. Some have been outright destroyed - their stems are snapped. There is no recovering from a snapped stem.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
It'll take a few days to see which of the unsnapped-but-damaged plants will recover and which ones won't. Sonofabitch. And the worst part is that for some of them, such as the mini bell peppers, losing those 6-8 weeks would be the difference between getting a harvest this year or not. Our growing season here is short enough that 6-8 weeks makes a real difference in terms of plants that take awhile to grow.
So I moved them all outside, placed on the floor at one end of the balcony so I could block Connor from reaching them.
And then this morning, there was... a fucking HAILSTORM.
A HAILSTORM. WTF.
And of course it was coming from exactly the right slanted direction to go *in* to the balcony rather than being blocked by the balcony above. And of course the far end of the balcony, where the plants were, was the side the hail was able to reach.
Almost all the plants I had been lovingly nurturing under the grow light for the past 6-8 fucking weeks, as well as the Russian heirloom tomato plant that I bought last week and planted yesterday, have been severely damaged. Some have been outright destroyed - their stems are snapped. There is no recovering from a snapped stem.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
It'll take a few days to see which of the unsnapped-but-damaged plants will recover and which ones won't. Sonofabitch. And the worst part is that for some of them, such as the mini bell peppers, losing those 6-8 weeks would be the difference between getting a harvest this year or not. Our growing season here is short enough that 6-8 weeks makes a real difference in terms of plants that take awhile to grow.