Kelvin’s Guide to Post-hailstorm Plant Recognition

(~2 minutes to read)

If this was a Twitter post, I’d have called it “Shredded Tweet”, but it’s longer than 140 characters, so there’s another opportunity missed.

We just had the mother of all hailstorms. Both Mrs. H and I work from home, and there’s usually someone home at all times, but this afternoon we were out shooting video for a high school grad—the one regular project of the year that requires both of us. Just as we left the venue, the storm broke. We drove the six kilometres home in at times near-zero visibility, having to shout to each other to make ourselves heard. If we’d left fifteen minutes earlier, we’d have missed the storm. As it was, we got home to a shredded garden.

Given that this is the first year we’ve tried extra special hard to make the yard look pretty, the sense of disappointment and feelings of “what’s the point” are much magnified in my mind right now, but Mrs. H is always positive and optimistic, and assures me that they’ll recover.

I guess Egypt recovered from the plagues of locusts and camels (or whatever the other plagues were), so in the long term, Mrs. H will be proved right. But for this year, we’re looking at a mess.

So without further ado, here is Kelvin’s guide to post-hailstorm plant recognition.

1 Tomato Easily recognized by the redundant support cage.
2 Lily “Consider the lily” said Brian Cohen in the movie about his life. Well—consider this lily, Brian. And if it bears any resemblance to my garden flipping you the bird, oh well.
3 Delphinium (Possibly) We never did positively identify it. Now we may never do.
Begonia Sorry—I have to harp back to Monty Python, and the Gumby Flower Arrangement sketch, in which D. P. Gumby refers to “pretty begonias”. These look like the result of his flower arranging. Notice the slow-release irrigation technology that this begonia enjoys.
5 Wave Petunia Hah—they’re not waving now.

Mother Nature really does have a sick sense of humour. But if this is what it did to our few flowers and tomato plants, what did it do to local farmers’ crops? Farmers—I do truly feel for you right now.

And to think that I used to complain about the weather in the old country. More recently, I’ve been feeling a little smug about the atrocious weather over there compared with here.

What was that John Lennon song about Karma???

Ah well. The joys of living in southern Alberta. There’s always next year, I suppose. And if we do try for another pretty garden, I’ll be seriously considering installing nuclear blast shields.