Stormy, Stormy Saturday

 We were out of town selling tie-dye this weekend.  While we were away Billings was hit with quite a doozy of a storm.  Some parts of town reported three inches of rain in one hour.  Given that Billings averages 14 inches of precipitation a year that, including snow, that is one mighty downpour.  It also came with some feisty winds.  Or that is what I am told and evidence indicates since, as mentioned, I missed it.

Actually, the storm hit us up north, too.  Our tent impressed us with its ability to withstand the wind.  We had to shut down the show more than an hour early on Sunday since the winds were starting to destroy people's booths and gazebos.

I was disheartened the moment we pulled in the drive.  My sunflowers, so big and beautiful, were all leaning and fallen over.  They'd been nearly 15 feet tall.  I was so sad.

Sad, sad sunflower.

We checked over the house itself and all was well.  The basement was dry.  No windows were broken or anything.  That was sure a relief.  We're both so glad our house is up on a slight rise.

Then we checked the backyard and garden.  Oh, there was some chaos there.  It was quite apparent that a small stream had been flowing through the back yard.

There was a debris line that show how far up in the hill toward our house it had risen.  The boards which separate our garden beds from the grass had floated all the way across the yard before getting hung up on the neighbor's fence.  I am glad they've got a fence or the boards would likely have floated away entirely!

There are boards all the way across the yard against that fence covered with woodvine.

 The yard was strewn with compost as the stream had pulled apart one of Matt's compost pile.  

That mat of grass was originally on top of the compost pile behind it.

We'd foolishly left our harvest of onions outside to dry on the patio.  Well, needless to say they we not exactly dry.

Some of the peppers were knocked over, most likely by the edge boards as they started to float away.

Lots of compost had accumulated along the edges of the beds.

The corn was almost entirely flattened.  I think there were maybe three stalks still standing.  Matt staked them up again.  We'll see what happens.  They had some cute little ears starting to form, too.

Some of the corn at our community garden was also flattened.

Oh, well.  What can one do?  Its completely out of our hands which is in so many ways comforting.  We can do what we can, but there is always an element of gambling to growing things.  It will all, more or less, be fine.  We were impressed that our bean tepees held up against the winds.

In a way, I am glad we were not here for the actual storm.  Its not like there would have been anything we could have done about it anyways and I would have been fretting as I watched out the window.  It was better to just come home and have it all be done already.  Matt got the yard all spruced up again this morning.  The first thing he did was stake up my sunflowers for me.  Even before staking up the corn.  He could tell I'd been pretty devastated about it.  What a guy!