Woodstone Prairie

… we were hit with the worst hail storm either Joe or I can remember. It poured rain (we ended up with somewhere between 4-5″… a LOT for Colorado), the wind blew a gale, and it hailed… for close to 4 hours straight. Luckily we had no tornadoes too close, but having to head for safety in the basement was a definite possibility as tornado watches and warnings kept piling up for our area. (I get email alerts about severe weather watches and warnings, and received somewhere in the area of 45 email “warnings” during the 12 hours before and after the storm!)

During most of the storm we stayed busy trying to keep the family room dry since that part of the roof sprung multiple leaks shortly after the wind and hail started. By the time the storm finally wound down we had pots and bowls strategically placed all over the room to catch the water dripping down. When we weren’t catching drips, we were watching the storm… it was an amazing, breathtaking thing.

Our little dry lake bed was overflowing with water, and the gully down in the back pasture turned into a 6′ deep rush of raging water wildly picking up everything in it’s path and carrying it downstream.

Part of the driveway was washed down into the pumpkin patch, and many of the trees were almost stripped of their leaves. My gardens were, of course, virtually destroyed, and they’ll be little/no fruit from the fruit trees this year… On the bright side though, the berries are coming back quickly, and a few pumpkin seedlings even made it through.

Here’s what our back pasture usually looks like…

And how it looked during the storm…

I was SO thankful that all that water didn’t have to flow around (or through) our house… Our land is in a small, shallow, valley but the house is kind of nestled on a higher spot on our piece of hilly land, well out of the way of the torrents of water that were flowing through…) The barn also stayed dry (hurray!), although it was an unreachable island for awhile…

A few more storm pictures…

`

Since the storm, I’ve been working to get things cleaned up again… raking up the leaves and branches, trimming broken branches, moving things that were washed down (like mulch) back where they should be, and replanting and reseeding areas that couldn’t be salvaged.

Once the clean-up is done I’ll finish my latest “just for fun” project…. turning our old wooden fence out front into a “magic” fence. (This is done with a bag of marbles from the dollar store, a drill, and several hours with nothing better to do than make the neighbors wonder why you are drilling a hundred or so holes in your fence.)

Here’s a sneak peak…

Our magic fence:

`

I love how the shiny marbles look, especially with the sun shining through them, next to the old rough wood.

And now it’s back to work…