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What a weekend for natural phenomena!
Had a great shopping trip and bought loads of plug plants at the local nursery Saturday morning. Didn't get served by the usual surly woman but by a really helpful young man. So all the better for info and walked out with a lot more than I meant to. Plus a promise to go back in two weeks for more.
Need to remember: third or fourth weekend or so in July for seasons 1, 2 and 3 caulis and cabbages; first or second weekend in August for season 4 and calçots.
Sunday, planted most things out as it was a nice cloudy day. Then, just as I was finishing the lettuce, I looked up and there was a monster cloud. Rushed in just before the rain and hail hit.
It was a weird storm, with hail falling in bands. 20 mm of total precipitation near the house, 50 mm down by the winter huerto. Some things totally untouched, other things shredded. Most of the melons and squash won't do anything now this year (all the trailing vines smashed off). But the new brassicas and lettuce have survived, despite being under water. The tomatoes are fine, unbelievably, but the aubergines and peppers barely 40 cm away have suffered, with shredded leaves and loads of branches snapped off. Car bonnet dinged, but the solar panels are OK.
I don't normally wear gloves when handling plug plants, but yesterday I did. Fortunately, as I stirred up a nest of minute scorpions while planting out a romanesco. And this morning I nearly trod on a metre-long Montpellier snake basking on the path in the fields. Lots of birds dipping in and out of the plants. Don't think they're having a go at the new brassicas but picking up snails, which have come out in force after the rain.
We have a local friend who says these storms come in threes and the third one is usually the worst. Let's hope he's wrong. Either way, I shouldn't complain as it's par for the course here and I should be used to it by now. And it's nowhere near as bad as our friends X and M, who lost their casa rural, which burnt to the ground in a fire on Friday.
