Thought Patterns

I have a cool flower bed or two here at the house. I have raspberry lilies, daylilies, iris, daffodils, tulips, and a ton of hosta. I also have a bridal wreath shrub and a blue mist shrub. Lorna also has two ferns.

All was fine until this year.

First we got unusually warm weather in the early spring. All the flora was out and oh so happy, despite my warnings. Then came some frosts. Then came a late heavy wet snow.

Some of the plants looked like they would recover although would not be near their usual beauty.

Then came the hail storm. And the next. And the next.

Oh, and then the drought.

The hosta suffered the most since it has such big broad leaves.

This year I had less than five hosta bloom, only one or two daylilies, one raspberry lily, a lot, but not as much as usual, of the daffodil bloomed.

With such a hot summer, I didn't venture out much. I try to go out at least once a day but not this summer. I may be insane but I'm not stupid. But today is such a pretty day, nice temp, cool breeze. So I went outside and took the camera.

The main bed up front.

The hosta

Despite the damage, there are still younger hosta that started growing after the frost, snow, and hail. They have nice leaves.

The raspberry lilies

The blue mist shrub, which was sheltered during the hail storms, did good although it needed daily watering. It is even having some new growth.

Lorna's mom gave me a rabbit statue to go with my other one. They are out among the day lilies although they weren't as well hidden as usual.

Me and THE Lee Lynch:

I keep forgetting to mention this. I upload weather related images to WeatherUnderground.com. One of my more recent ones got an Approver's Choice Award! How cool is that?

You can find all my weather images on their site. Below is the winning image.

The above image is taken from this one:

This was after one heckuva hail storm a few days ago. The sun had come back out and the temp difference made some pea-soup thick fog. When the sun started to set, the trees and bamboo just framed it right.

Some of the hail storm:

4pm (that's not rain, that's hail coming down; the dark things are ripped up leaves)

Afterwards: (the light-colored patches in the road is piles of hail)

Damage:
My poor hosta! First the late snow, then the hard frosts, now this.

The other end of our road:

We went out to run errands and the sky was looking ominous. Black, active, nasty looking. You know, ominous.

We came across wet road at a few points but didn't meet rain until about two miles or less away from home. The truck was beaten senseless by the hail stones and Lorna and I were shouting at each other to be heard.

Normally, we would have pulled over and waited it out except we had the dogs outside, several of which are terrified of storms. So we pushed on.

We crested the final hill, about a half mile from the house, and started down…and the sky cleared. No rain. No hail. But good golly Miss Molly! The ditches were running over with water, there was debris everywhere. And then we saw the sides of the road was white with hail.

We live in a low spot on the hill/mountain. It is literally uphill in all directions. As we approached that, we realized there was a thick pile of hail across the two lane paved road. It had to be at least ankle deep in the middle and deeper on the sides. We pulled up to the house and this is what we saw.

And the hail in the road, about a half hour later:

By the way, the dogs were relatively fine. Sam, the young'un, keeps going out and eating hail, coming back in soaking wet and muddy. Again. And again. PopCorn and Sparky are still twitchy. Maggie was the only one dry. Even she had to have heard that hail on the tin roof. Joella is velcro puppy. Oh, and Casey is just fine. She could care less. The goldfish (Sumo, Sake, and Kiko) just wanted food. The cats that were outside demanded to be let in and the cat that was inside wanted out then wanted back in immediately!

Anyway, the storm was gone and it's not rained since. We've had a very dry winter and needed the rain. Just not all at once! I see blue sky and wonderfully huge and white thunderheads from where I sit.

I was checking the area webcams and came across this lovely view:

It is from Cold Springs Ranch near Max Patch.

webcam | weather station

This is what the clouds look like from downtown Asheville, looking north.

downtown webcam, north

Or, rather, holey.

We were at our version of Cheers, Waffle House, and Lorna was getting ready to pay. She pulled out a dollar bill that, bless its heart, had been raped, pillaged, beaten, and (pun intended) punched.

Why on earth did someone do this? Were they that bored? What would drive someone to do it? What was their motive? What were they thinking? Are the holes random? Do they say something in braille?

Gives me something to think about as I lay back and sniff and snot and recovery from Typhoid Mary's germs.

big image

We here in WNC didn't get much from the storm. Not even Mt. Mitchell. My friend in Charlotte said they have over 2" of snow with sleet and snow coming down at 11am.

Mt. Mitchell webcam:

Downtown Asheville webcam, facing north:

I also just made a page of radar images of the storm that ran through here.

We did get some sleet and a little bit of snow, but neither lasted long.

(click image for larger version)

Sleet on ramp:

Sleet on "driveway":

Sleet and Snow on "driveway":