Weather and such

Gardening news: My redwood sapling, poor thing, was declared dead over the weekend. It had been a little crispy for a while, so it probably died a few weeks ago. Not sure why; it had been looking brown around the edges for a while. I hoped that we would move and I could move it into a big half-barrel tub so it would have more room, but that didn't happen in time.

So it got dismantled over the weekend (dismembered sounds so gory) and put in the trash. The pot is out on the porch until we can put the dirt out for yard-waste pickup.

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We had more weather today. It's been a heck of a spring so far; that thunderstorm back in December was just the beginning.

I heard some thunder just before noon, checked the local weather channel, and decided to pop out for the mail before the storm got here. I didn't quite make it - the hail started before I could even get my jacket on. Pea and bean sized hail, and lots of it.

This is the front sidewalk; those spots are my footprints - there's a low spot in the sidewalk, and the puddle was covered with floating hail. Got my socks wet going through that for the mail.

There was so much rain and hail that the hail was running downhill on the runoff. It's not something I've seen that often; usually when it hails, it's not enough to cover the ground this way. Little rafts of hail floating downhill are kind of neat, in a strange way.


This is the gutter-spout on our building. That pile of hail is about 3 inches deep. Even now, 4 hours later, there are little hail piles under all the spouts. The back sidewalk had a patch of hail about 3 feet square and 2 inches or so deep. Walking on it to take these pics was different, it's not like walking in snow at all. Crunchier, and a little roll-y, like walking on jellybeans.



Luckily, the storm moved through before lunch and the weather seems to be clear, just cloudy. The city Parks & Recreation is having a "Tons of Trucks" display this afternoon - all sorts of big trucks for kids to look at and climb into - and we're taking El Burrito. He's been talking about riding in Grandpa's Truck for almost two weeks solid, so we think he'll get a kick out of this. I can see two potential problem spots, though. The obvious one is having to leave at some point, but he may take a notion to get upset because these trucks aren't going to take him for a ride around the field to look at the cows or anything like that. :)

Hopefully, though, he'll just have a good time. We had an early lunch and he started his nap about 45 minutes earlier than usual. He was tired anyway - he woke up in the night coughing (swallowed the wrong way or something) and ended up in bed with us after a snack. 2:30 in the morning, and he kept saying "stick" or something - stink? steak? Hard to tell with the binky in his mouth - and giggling like crazy.