Thursday, May 21, 2009

Blowing in the Wind

When Sara was little, she often sang the Bob Dylan song the way she understood it:
The ants are my friends, they're blowing in the wind. The ants are just blowing in the wind.
I didn't actually see any ants blowing around yesterday, but if they had ventured out of their anthills they surely would have been. We had about 90 degrees F with constant blasting wind, gusting up to 50 miles per hour. I was working at the garden center where all the plants were at risk of drying out and tipping over; our goal all day was to keep everything alive through repeated watering.
When I called home at lunch, Cadence told me she had been in the woods pulling buckthorn when she heard an incredible crash. She ran to the pasture to discover a huge, old maple tree had broken and fallen over the fence into the pasture. Luckily, no cows, chicken tractors, buildings or daughters were injured and the entire tree is resting on a huge limb so the fence is mostly intact. It will, however, create a tremendous amount of work that is not in our workplan. I hope our little chainsaw is up to the task.
The tree was not the only casualty of the wind. Our little greenhouse was picked up by the wind and collapsed in a heap. It's a good thing I was in documenting mode when I got home from work or I might have cried. All of my 120 beautiful heritage tomatoes, Sara's 20 types of herbs, Cadence's assortments of peppers, and the flowers I had wintersown that were waiting for garden space were dumped out. Everyone but Cadence was off at jobs at the time, so she had to take on the overwhelming rescue alone. She saved the majority of the plants, but now they are all mixed up. We probably won't know what type of tomato or pepper each plant is until it begins to set fruit -- and there is no hope of organizing the garden by variety. Maybe we will discover some advantage to random garden planting...




5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh man that's terrible! Well at least no was hurt but the greenhouse, sorry to hear about that. Although, things happen for a reason right? Event he bad things.

Marie said...

hey susan --- i decided the only way to deal with the wind and it's aftermath -- is well, put on the "big girl panties" and go at it....getting old though....

Nicole said...

OMG...u are so brave...I would have cried !!! but then...now u are gonna have a garden full of surprises...thats nice ...hehe

robert said...

Dimidium facti, qui coepit, habet.
(getting started is already have finished)
Horaz

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry you suffered such a loss! I'm glad you could salvage most of the plants though.