More Crazy Storm Damage

A huge, weird weather system came through the whole area the other day.  The nation wide severe storm and tornado warning system was going off for well over an hour.  We had wild winds, heavy driving rains in heavy cloud cover that had the outside solar lights on in the daytime because it was so dark.  When it was all over and done, there were branches down every where.   We were lucky that we still had hydro, but a lot of areas even nearby had none for hours.   Once again, the storm took out my clothes line.   The clean up of the yard yielded 6 trailer loads of branches, limbs and other tree debris.  The clumps of leaves, just got mowed into mulch.  The worst thing though, was that other half of the tree that fell on my garden in early July, came down, taking a pine tree with it, and it landed - yup, on my garden!   The wire tomato cage and the spiral support are visible, but crushed and one tomato showing on the right side.

It mainly fell on the large Mortgage Lifter tomatoes in the raised beds.  One was just lightly hit, and mainly with smaller limbs separate from the main trunk, so it was fairly easy to clean up.   I ended up picking some of the very low fruit that was still green, because one of them had bite marks in it.   I felt it was better to save the rest of those tomatoes, than feed whatever was making them dinner.   The other plant though was completely covered by the tree.   Hubby trimmed enough away so that I could pick all the still green tomatoes from the plant and bring them inside to ripen.

I was amazed at how quickly the rescued green tomatoes ripened inside.   Mostly ripened, as when I realized that I had to either can them or use them up today, because they were ripening and quite soft, I found a couple of them were not quite ripe inside yet.  I peeled and chopped them up.  Mortgage Lifter tomatoes are a heritage breed which results in huge tomatoes, with lots of flesh bits.  They're great on sandwiches.  I heated them to a boil in a large pot so I could water bath can the batch.  If you heat the jars, and heat the tomatoes, you can put them into a canner filled with near boiling water without risking thermal shock.  I also find that heating the tomatoes allow me to put more fruit into the jars.  

I also used a fair number of the fancy Black Cherry Tomatoes, which are actually greenish brown and green inside. (This is the important information) They are a nice size cherry tomato, albeit ugly.  There are lots still on the vines.  There were too many to eat and I didn't want them to go bad.   A few seconds in a hot water bath and the skins slipped off nicely.  I mixed them into the chopped tomatoes and I thought nothing of it, until I pulled the 7 jars from the canner.   Because the huge tomatoes were chopped, the tomatoes separated, with the meaty part floating over the clear tomato juice.   It's apparently a pectin issue which is released or broken down when chopped too much.   One jar had to wildly green liquid on the bottom and a very green flesh.  I will admit to commenting on the weird effect of the little brown cherry tomatoes.   Then hubby, who remember pulled down the jars for me, reminded me that one of the jars I used was a fancy green glass one.   So I actually think they are all normal and I was just doing the canning by rote and didn't even pay attention to the colour of the jar.  How did I really not notice that?   However, I'm happy that all jars sealed nicely and tomorrow afternoon, I'll be able to remove the rings, clean them up and store them away for winter use.  Thankfully I didn't use one of the purple glass jars.  I wonder what sort of surprise I would have had with that one?

Freak Fierce Storm.

 

First look at the storm damage on the garden

Weather perceptions are defined by what your climate normals are.  We're currently stuck in a miserable heat wave.  Our daytime temperatures are hovering in the 33C to 34C, with a humidex of 42C - 44C. It may not be that warm to some areas, but here it's really quite abnormal.  We're definitely not used to these sort of temperatures, although we get it once or twice a summer for a couple of days at a time.  It's not cooling down much at night either, making for little relief.  

Split tree that fell on the garden

Besides being uncomfortable, there is usually a risk of pop up storms.   We had one of those yesterday afternoon.   I kept thinking to myself that I should bring the laundry in because it would have been dry fairly quickly, when I looked outside and realized that the hazy blue sky was now grey.   I ran outside just as a few drops started falling.  
I did get the laundry off the line but it was starting to get a bit wet by the last couple of t-shirts.   I then ran to the barn to shut the door.  I'd left the chooks inside because the two new girls have still been hesitant to come in at night.   The more they're in their coop room, the more they realise it's home.  Obviously a week wasn't enough to settle them in with the existing flock.

Anyway, by the time I reached the barn, the winds had picked up.   I got back to the house, with the wettish laundry in tow, but I was soaked because the rain was now pounding down.   After changing my shirt and towelling off my hair, I made dinner early because with that rain and the winds, our power could have gone out at any time.  It did flicker, but we ended up being okay. As I started to make dinner I heard the sounds of a tree or branches coming down.   We checked the windows but couldn't go out because the rain storm was now crashing down thunder and lightning too.   It was a quick moving storm and about 20 minutes later, my son found the culprit.  Half a tree had fallen down on my garden!  Yikes

Bird feeders and stands in with the garlic bed

We'll start the clean up this afternoon.  It's going to take a bit of time and a chainsaw.   From a quick glance, it looks like all but a couple of the 36 garlic plants have been crushed, along with all the green beans, all but 3 tomato plants, some peppers and cucumbers.   Fingers crossed there will be enough growing tips left on the tomatoes and peppers to keep them viable.   I'll have to go get more tomato cages if the plants can be saved because they are mangled!

The bird feeders and the  wrought iron and steel hanging posts are bent and tangled in with the branches and plants of the raised beds.  Even most of the large pots and planters were hit.   Last nighty I was able to salvage two tomato plants which were on the perimeter of the fallen tree trunk and branches.   One needed a bit of repotting so I'm hoping that the roots weren't disturbed too badly.

The stupid tree also took down the clothes line.  Luckily it looks like the cable didn't break but just pulled out at the ratchet thing which holds the ends together.  As long as we can find the wheel which was attached to the tree at the far end, it should be a fairly easy, inexpensive fix.  Still, I won't be able to hand the laundry out until the rest of the clean up is done and we can see if we can find the missing pieces.