Hail as Teacher

My blog has been quiet lately. It has either been raining all day, for days on end, or I’ve been busy playing catch up in gardens all over town. I could have been responsible, and written on the rainy days, but it just didn’t happen. This week, we got shaken up a bit though, and my Facebook feed was full of sad garden stories this morning.

This time of year, most of us have had our veggies and flowers planted for awhile now, and are starting to see new growth, which of course, gets us excited, and and we really start looking forward to tomato harvests down the road. Hail is there to say “I don’t care what you did, I’m a force beyond your control.” What started out as a pretty cool light(ning) show in the sky Thursday night, quickly turned into a storm that included hail for nearly a half hour, that left many of our gardens trashed, and stripped tons of leaves off of trees, and caused untold amounts of property damage around the Denver area and beyond.

Many of us will have to start again. Some of us will throw our hands up and say “never again.” Talk is cheap, you never-againers. My motto this year has been something along the lines of Plants are a disease, without any cure. Once you have the gardening bug, it’s there to stay. It’s like the chicken pox virus hiding out in your bones, just waiting to become shingles. But it’s better than that…because it results in tomatoes, not shingles.

How is hail a teacher? It shows us that we are vulnerable, and it levels the playing field between master gardener and garden novice. What we decide to do in the aftermath of seeing our well-loved gardens getting decimated shows us our own resilience. Plants are also resilient, and they will show us that a beautiful garden is still possible. Let’s get out the pruners, Denver – just cut away what can’t be salvaged, and give a little extra love to your garden for a little bit. We likely have a wet summer ahead, which is fairly rare, and something we should be grateful for, so try to focus on that in the meantime.

If you feel you need some help with hail recovery, feel free to contact me, and we’ll get it done. Have faith!