Yesterday I signed off in a slightly petulant and disgruntled way, before settling down for the evening with a mojito made with Caribbean rum. As I sipped, the sky grew darker and the cats came charging in. Too good an opportunity to miss, we closed the back door, to signal the end of cat external adventures for the day. Then we heard it - hail stones! The trusty Meteo France weather app showed us the enormity of what we had to sit through.
OK, so they called it heavy rain, but it was hail and lots of it. After dinner, I went out to close up the chicken run and see what had happened - I think I have found a way to get the photos to show side by side, so you can see that the tree peony flower got rather slashed about.
Similarly the snow in summer was now snow in hail!
It was a veritable winter wonderland outside - and these photos are a good half hour after it all stopped.
Even before yesterday evening, we knew that we had no plums, no peaches and no pears to look forward to this year. We are still optimistic that there will be apples and quince, but the quantities remain to be seen. The apple tree leaves have been damaged by the hail, but there are still nascent apples and a bit of blossom on the trees, so we live in hope! There are holes in the vine leaves, but there are still bunches of flower buds on the grape vine, so that may have got through too.
All day there has been a flow of water from the roof drain, as the drifts of hail stones slowly melt in the sheltered gap between our house and next door. I suspect the moral of this story is to always be respectful of your mother!!
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