Saturday, March 21, 2009

Tigers and Lions and Hail, Oh My!

The forecast called for isolated thunderstorms. Around 8 pm we heard thunder and saw lightening but the water was falling softly and the wind was gentle enough that I did not worry about my 5 tomato plants that are outside in self-watering containers. I went to sleep.
At 1:30am, HAIL! I berated myself for not assuming that a thunderstorm in March would produce hail. I began running through the mental inventory of all the tomatoes I still had inside. Plenty.
Still, I felt dumb for not preventing the assured destruction of the tomatoes that had already been hardened.
This morning I walked outside and took inventory of the damage.
NONE.
Actually, one tiny basil plant bit. One out of 20.
I consider myself lucky and I hope I learned something. Assume hail in Spring thunderstorms.

I got teeny tiny lettuce coming up in my square foot gardening bed. It is head lettuce of some type. The package did not specify. It is seed number 445 from Thompson and Morgan.

I looked at the spot in the front yard where I will plant flowers and noticed that the lonely Tiger Lily that grows every year is not lonely anymore. There are now 3 more Tiger Lilys. I Googled Tiger Lilys and learned that what I thought were seeds, are actually mini bulbs that grow on the stem of the lily. Oh, I am going to have a Tiger Lily farm next year! I read that they usually take 2 years to flower but I can wait. The Tiger Lily won't bloom until Summer so I won't have pictures until then.
One last thing. I also saw this for the first time on the flower-bed-to-be:


Parts of the bed are covered with these little craters. My friend told me they were Ant Lion traps.
We dug one up and we found a tiny caterpillar. Too small to get a good picture with my old camera. The idea is that ants will fall into this sand pit and the Ant Lion, which waits at the bottom much like the monster in the Star Wars movie, will grab them.
My friend assures me that the tiny worm will grow into this:

I CAN'T WAIT!!!

3 comments:

  1. That is one scary-looking insect. Glad you got off so lightly from the hail; I have rather a grim view of the stuff, after being all but wiped out last summer by a pair of storms. Much plotting will go into protecting me from similar events this year.
    --Kate

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  2. The hail, in fact, is the reason why I decided on the self-watering containers. My plan is to move the tomatos and peppers under the porch in the back of the house whenever the forecast calls for thunderstorms. At least until after the Spring storms.

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  3. I have never even heard of such a critter. I sure could use some of them out here in Arizona!

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