august garden update: fucked

mindy and i visited my parents on friday afternoon.  we finished loading out my stuff from foam city, and dropped the last of the things at the storage unit.  in the evening, we peeked in on my mom's garden, then i grilled dinner under some ominous looking clouds.  just about the time we finished eating and my dad was arriving from indianapolis, the rain unleashed, hard and heavy.  it let up after about 30 minutes or so.  then mindy and i set out to make the 2 hour drive back home.

as we were driving mindy was looking at Facebook and noticed that there had been a hail storm in west lafayette.  when we got home we noticed that there had been more than just a huge storm.  the tree in front of our house was a bit mangled and had dropped all of the berries that curse us throughout the winter months.  i flipped the light on to look out in the garden and....HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

it was destroyed to the point of no reaction from either of us.  the first thing we saw was the top row of what we refer to as 'the bleachers.'  jalepeno, padron, chilis and fish peppers were all stripped bare with nothing left but the stems.  the plants on the bottom half of the "bleachers" were not as stripped, but just as bad.

eggplants were so dented they look like hammered metal.

bell peppers with holes in the sides of them.

most of our ready-to-be-ripe tomatoes on the ground instead of on the plants.  okra: fucked.  my fresh little beets i planted a week ago were buried under 2 inches of hail ice.  our patio was covered in what used to be our plants.  it looks like someone set off a bomb on our patio, the carnage splattered all up the walls and fence.

neither of us had an initial reaction outside of just plain shock.  we went outside and tried to assess the damage in the dark, but it was hard to see what all had really happened.  we did our best to dig some of the ice out of the pots our plants live in, throwing and crashing each chunk to the concrete floor.  then we went to bed with heavy hearts.

this morning we both woke way earlier than we should have, soldiered our way out in the garden and got to work.  depressing as it may be, we think we can salvage some of our plants.  some are totally fucked, but some seem to be able to be saved.  when i woke up, mindy was researching what to do with hail damage, and it seems that some of the plants can make a come back.  but it happened at the exact wrong time of the season, in that everything was ready to ripen, and i'm not sure there's enough heat and light left in the summer for new flowers to form into full fruit on our indeterminate plants.  we're not totally defeated though.  last year we had a pretty solid fall garden, and with our summer plants cranking along like they were, it seemed we were not going to be able to do much for fall this year.  now that plan has changed.  i know i'll at least have several open planters for carrots, bok choi, and other cooler weather food.  but it was just devastating to come home and see that what was going along strong, could be wiped out in a matter of minutes.

in the words of tracy morgan, 'Damn nature; you scary.'