Rain, Hail and Shine

Easter is upon us and 2015 is flying by. Its been awhile since my last post so I thought I`d treat you all to some photos from over the years of some dramatic weather we`ve experienced here. Gardening is always a challenge at the best of times but when mother nature strikes an angry pose, all you can do is run for cover and wait it out - which is what we did when she opened the flood gates.....

When it rains this hard, gutters overflow, rain tanks spill over and garden soils wash away. And those rotten pencil pines flop open with the weight and never go back up! Urgh I hate pruning from high ladders - in fact I got so sick of them opening up we pulled em out! That`ll teach em. Ive got a nice rose arch there now.

So, lots of rain is one thing, but when it hails IT DOES DAMAGE!

And of course it always comes out of the blue so you have no time to batten down the hatches or   save the cushions. How can something so pretty create so much damage - lucky my car was in the garage - not so lucky for the tomato bushes and shredded vegetation throughout the garden

The whole garden looked like this - shredded to ribbons. It was heart breaking.

And then there was lightening......poor old Mulberry tree

No really, poor old Mulberry tree :[  If it wasn`t enough to be struck by lightening and survive, along comes a mighty gale that blew it over! Strongest 100 knot winds we have experienced here. Check out the blog `Saving the Mulberry tree` believe it or not it`s still going.

Some weather is tougher than most on gardens and drought and bushfires are one of the worst. This was only two years ago. We had no rain throughout winter and went straight into hell, missing spring altogether. The tanks were all dry and no amount of hand watering made any difference. All we hoped to achieve was to save trees and shrubs - the smaller stuff was more replaceable, but sad to lose collections of delicate plants. These photos were taken on another device and are a bit grainy.

And if that`s not enough there is always Frost

Lucky the cabbages don't mind

But, at the end of the day, the frost melts, the hail damage grows out and the rain drenched soils

bring forth new life .... and gardening goes on

I hope the weather has been kinder to your little patch of the earth. Leave a comment on your worst weather event - It would be nice to know I don't suffer alone.