Oh hail

I should know better.  Having posted on Monday my hopes for a good crop of lemons, hail storms permitting, the next day we had a terrific hailstorm.  Like most days it started nicely with warm sun and breakfast outside, by early afternoon thunder was rumbling around the mountains, finally lightning and hailstones the size of grapes arrived. 

It was worrying as the terrace is now almost stripped of tiles, it stood water in places as the surface is now quite uneven but fortunately there was only the slightest drip into the room below.  The damage to my plants however was considerable with new growth shredded, flowers destroyed and compost splashed all over the place.  I’d spent the morning potting up cuttings, they looked bedraggled and there was leaf debris everywhere.  

However while the flowers on the grapes are battered the lemon flowers seem ok and it’s too early for the olives to have suffered any damage.  The garden was white, in fact the next day there were still patches of hail in the orchard.  While I moan a lot about bureaucracy and inefficiency here there’s nothing to be done about the weather, we just take what comes and mostly it’s wonderful. I’ve already swept and cleaned ready for the sun to return.