As I finished up taking pictures of the flowers (previous posts), this rolled in ...
And it was time to go inside!
And then after the strong storm swept through,
I took my camera outside to find out what made it through okay ...
Blanc Double de Coubert
Country Dancer
Carefree Beauty
Cinco de Mayo
Music Box
Dream Weaver
Little Dream Weaver blossom
Kiss Me
Kiss Me again
Easy Does It
Bonica
The wasp that was hiding out in Bonica
Hydrangea
Peony
Double Pink Knockout
Therese Bugnet
.. and what didn't make it through okay ...
Petunias
Peonies (took a beautiful picture of this bunch all happy-like just the other day)
Beaten-up Therese Bugnet
(just took a picture of these blooms a couple hours ago when they were still pretty, in the post "June's Roses")
Battered Peonies, giving up and packing it in
(Kinda how I feel some days!)
And the sad but still pretty Cinco de Mayo bloom
AND THEN ...
Just moments after I took those pictures, the storm came back. More angry and powerful than before.
This is the rain starting again.
It was such a heavy downpour that I figured I'd take a picture ...
And a few seconds later ... Oh my goodness!
And a few seconds later ...
OH MY GOODNESS! GET THE KIDS IN THE MINIVAN AND HEAD FOR THE HILLS!!! GOD'S SENDING ANOTHER FLOOD!!! AUNTIE EM ... AUNTIE EM!!!
And then ... came the hail ...
And more hail ... 'cuz no self-respecting storm would blow through without hail!
(This is after it had been melting for awhile.)
This is the river that's forming next to our garage (and that's filling it with water because the water-level has risen above the bottom of the garage door)
And this is the pond that's in the yard next to our house
(Guess what? There is no pond next to our house.)
Yep, I can only imagine how the flowers look after this one.
Only the strongest will survive!
But I know my son's melons didn't ...
Poor things!
And most of the plants are riddled with hail holes ...
(Look at the size of some of these holes! How big was that hail!?!)
And two of the 25-foot mulch-lined paths in the garden now have no mulch ...
(But how nice to see that the Creeping Charlie weeds are still there!)
The mulch ended up washing 30-ish feet away, turning a corner, and piling up in a thick patch in front of the Rhubarb, over the Raspberries, and up along the chicken-wire fence ...
Oh, and this is our indoor pool in the basement ...
Yeah ... Clean-up is gonna be fun!
Yes, there were a lot of casualties after these two storms,
such as this decapitated Gene Boerner:
But there were still some survivors ...
And they looked even better in the bright light of the following two days!
Music Box
A sea of Music Box
A sea of Double Pink Knockout
Easy Does It
Rose de Rescht
Peony
Carefree Beauty
Butterfly Weed
New Dawn
Hydrangea
Isn't this just beautiful? Intoxicating.
Bonica's nodding blossoms
The unidentified rose that came with the house
And a beaten-up Cinco de Mayo rose full of torn-up, downcast blossoms ...
... and one perfect flower completely untouched by the storm,
blooming all alone in the midst of destruction ...
(There's gotta be a life lesson in there somewhere.
May we all find the strength to keep blooming after the storms!)
Stunning in the sunlight two days after the storm
