Thanks, Dad!

So. It hailed last night. ;) Remember how we just planted all sorts of new plants? Yeah.

These pictures were taken this morning. I'm waiting for the hail to melt to decide just how gone these are. The plants in the pots actually held up considerably better than the ones in the ground, though there are definitely some losses.

The storm went through here last night from about 11-midnight. Boys had just gone to bed but the younger two promptly popped back out of bed to hide downstairs with me. Noah was amazingly still asleep (it was VERY loud)...was woken up by Micah so that he could see what was going on...and then went back to sleep. Took some convincing to get Micah to go back to bed after things had died down...he was, unsurprisingly, convinced that the world was ending, lol.

Let me also point out the many pieces of roof shingles...

Yup. Call's already in to the insurance adjuster (for the roof and also for Nathan's car, which unfortunately was parked in the driveway rather than the garage last night...it's quite dimpled but not as bad as some we saw on our walk this morning). I'll keep you posted.

And here's the back deck. You can see pieces of the roof here also. (Even the grill is dimpled.)

And this last picture is just because I thought it looked cool. ;)

I don't have the hail stone in the hand pictures like so many others, but trust me when I tell you there were definitely golf ball sized stones in the mix last night.

And it would be so easy to decide to just pave over the area out front that's now been decimated...to join the ranks of other locals bemoaning the loss of their gardens and plants. (And, yes, those new plants aren't looking so hot and most don't look like they even have a chance of struggling through.)

But. You know what? I'm a farmer's daughter. :) I can't count the number of times I watched my dad hope and pray that it wouldn't rain only to have a single storm take out most of our cherry crop. Acres and acres of cherries. Or the times he'd be up in the middle of the night to light the smudge pots to try to keep the fruit from freezing in the spring...only to have a single bad frost destroy buds. And, still, he'd smile. It's just Mother Nature, he'd shrug. And he'd repeat the entire cycle again the next year...full of optimism. And even when the crops were gone and income was thus severely affected, we managed. I had a full and happy childhood. :)

And, so. I'm choosing to be happy this morning...to delight in the faces of my neighbors who were out this morning cleaning up the mess with looks of "what can you do?" and smiles...to be thankful that we were safe and dry inside (some of our neighbors had skylights that were broken and, thus, water in their homes)...to marvel at how Noah could sleep through all that (and is, in fact, still asleep), lol...to appreciate the fact that we don't have to garden for food or livelihood...to laugh about the fact that I now don't really have to worry about those rabbits any more... ;)

Whew. Happy clean-up, y'all!