Even though I am recognizing the normal signs of seasonal change, this May has been anything but normal. We've had quite a bit of late snow in the high mountains, and down in the valley the weather has been unpredictable at best. Over the last two weeks we have had three damaging hail storms. Jim Cantore would have been in his glory with our Thunder Hail. Lots of thunder and lightning and huge hail. Hail as big as nickles and dimes. What you are looking at here is nickle-sized hail floating in three inches of water in my driveway. In addition to the hail we had an inch of rain in 25 minutes.
The hail stripped leaves off the trees, shrubs and flowers, punched bullet-like holes in leaves that didn't get stripped off and absolutely shredded other plants. I had just planted a large Empress Wu hosta two days before this storm. After the storm? She was battered.
Yesterday alone, we had an inch and a half of rain. All this is good, we need rain and snow, but hail? Could it just have been pea-sized? And that it had come before everything leafed out? The weather continues to be unsettled. High winds, rain almost everyday for the last ten days: from light showers to quite heavy downpours, and more in the forecast for the upcoming week.
But even with the wild ride Mother Nature has given us in May, migrant birds are coming through on schedule, plants are coming up, leafing out and blooming as they do every year. Amazing. Especially since my yard is full of normal.
The May bloomers are happily doing their thing and I can see the June posies are pushing up bloom stalks and plumping up their buds. Here are just a few of the blooms that are coloring my garden now.
It will be interesting to see what Mother Nature is planning for June.
