Setbacks

It was another beautiful day, blue skies, puffy white clouds, 71 degrees. It was the perfect day to plant a garden. Despite the weather forecast, it seemed unlikely that a thunderstorm was going to materialize. I guess that's why you could call us rookies, we have not yet developed an accurate weather eye. We planted about 1/3 of the garden, both seeds and some of the seedlings we have been babying since March including tomatoes, cucumbers, luffa (or loofah), and artichokes. As we were finishing up we began to see some threatening clouds over by the mountains but still didn't think that it would come our way. For days the same thing had happened. The clouds built up in the distance and then skirted around us, why should today be any different? We were oh so wrong.

The marble and pea sized hail and the torrential downpour resulted in the loss of approximately 70% of what we planted today.

Then we discovered this. As the cliche goes, when it rains it pours. Well, in our case, literally. As Joel and I placed buckets under the coal chute to catch the downpour and hauled boxes upstairs away from the 1/4 inch to 2 inch floodwaters, we kept looking at each other with this dazed expression on our faces. We had to agree that it was so bad it was almost funny. The great thing is that God is so faithful even in the middle, no, especially in the middle of setbacks. While Joel was busy sucking water out of the basement with the shop vac, our friends Rob and Erin called to tell us that they wanted give us 17 varieties of heirloom tomato plants from Rob's dad. One of the plants already has tomatoes growing on it! This will actually put us way ahead of where we were when we planted our tomatoes today.

Just as a side note, have you ever been in a house with a metal roof during a rainstorm? It is incredibly loud. Check this out:

Jen