West Texas Weather...

You either love it or hate it. As of yesterday morning... I hate it. Wednesday night we had a Thunderstorm blow through - and when I say blow through, I do mean BLOW through. I had a meeting early Thursday morning and on the call I was asked how much damage we had from the storm... I said, "damage?" I managed to contain myself long enough to finish the meeting (and get out of my pj's - ahhh, the joys of working from home...) before rushing out to check-on my precious garden.

This is what I found...

These were the sunflowers that were over 6 feet tall. The ones laying on the ground had their stems snapped into.

The flower head you see smashed into the ground directly down the photo from Bryce was the big, beautiful one I've been photographing so much. I took it's last picture on Wednesday evening - see the last photo in this blog.

These were the 8 stalks of corn. I read online that corn has very shallow roots. After checking them thoroughly, there were no broken stalks so I stood them all back up and patted them back into the ground and tied them to the planters and to each other for support. Hopefully they will be okay. I did harvest 4 ears last night for dinner... they might have been good if I had not burned them on the grill. Apparently, fresh picked corn doesn't need to be grilled as long as corn that has been off the stalk for several days. :) Whoopsie!

The skyscraper sunflowers are planted at both ends of the garden - this end had protection from the building so they were not nearly as damaged. The one laying over did have a partially broken stem, but I tied it up next to its neighbor to see if it would survive.

The other sunflowers on the North end of the garden are fairly damaged - they won't stand up straight. I am going to give them a few more days to see if they will do any better. If they don't I'll need to chop them down because they are hanging over my tomatoes that are starting to produce and I don't want them to block all the sun.

In memory of:

This is the photo I mentioned early - it was taken Wednesday evening a few hours before the storm hit. I was photographing how heavy it's head was - obviously bowing the stem.

I don't mean to make lite of the storm - I know this sounds petty... it was just a garden. Many people around us lost trees, etc. One of my co-workers found water running down the wall of her office. So, obviously, this is by no means a serious situation... heart breaking, yes, - serious, no. All in all, I am glad the storm waited until the flowers bloomed so I could enjoy the blooms for a few days.