Apricots were two days from picking when they got pounded by a brief but devastatingly intense hailstorm a few evenings ago.
Instead of offering baskets of fresh sun ripened apricots at my market table Saturday, I’m going to be making a whole lot of apricot chutney with all the bruised fruit and green cherry tomatoes which were blasted off the plants by ferocious ice bullets.
While the 0.2 inches of rain was very welcome, hail, though possessing elemental charisma, is not kind to food crops.
A few days before the storm, one of my American Robin (Turdus migratorius) roommates got tangled in the net over the apricot tree. He was sadly already dead when I found him after market on Saturday. He is now contributing to the fertility of a section of the Iris and Hemerocallis garden. I miss his rusty red breasted busyness at ground level in the garden.
The collection of ornamental succulents and aloes also took a beating from the hailstorm. Pink Bliss, my showpiece of a Kelly Griffin hybrid aloe had a leaf almost torn off.
Nothing to do but to cut that damaged leaf off with a sharp blade and live now with a lopsided star shape. Fortunately I had decided not to enter anything in the cactus and succulent show in Sante Fe this year, because this pretty flowering babe was probably the one I was grooming for that kind of debut.
Being on the front porch, I thought they would be protected, but the hail angled in and found some of them.
The little Coral Fires will probably adjust to severed leaf lopsidedness better that Madame Pink Bliss, due to their youth and their uniquely curvy nature.
In other garden news, while I was gathering the storm downed cherry tomatoes, I thought to check on the carrots. Seems I should have paid more attention to thinning. I have lost the plot with whether these were meant to be the red, black or orange varietals from India, but they were sweet and tasty, crunched raw just after taking this picture.
