This year I wanted to revamp everything in my backyard. With four dogs, it has slowly devolved into chaos with random great stuff. I redid my water feature to a pondless waterfall which is perfect. Kept my roses, am redoing a couple of flower beds to be higher and more showy, put in a fire pit, moved – well, a lot. Part of that was a landscape plan included lots of plants. All of which I bought and had been planting over the last week, after a ton of work preparing the area with rototilling and moving some dirt out so I had room to lay down 4 inches of gorilla mulch on top..
And then this happened.
That is our football stadium. Full of hail. I had 2 inches of hail all over my yard last night when it was all said and done. Yeah, that happened and I cried. I’ve been through this so many times, and the plants will either live or not – I’m not hopeful for most of them, they just had the crap beaten out of them. But they are predicting more hail this week. Yeah, I’m thinking of calling the sod guy if the rest of the little baby plants get decimated, then just work in the flower beds forever. I’m over it at this point. Plant some annuals, a couple of nice perennials I like, like a couple of more daphnes, more bulbs, irises, peonies, and give it up. Planting in Denver is always a dice roll, no matter when you do it, and I cannot count the hundreds of dollars in plants that have been wasted over the years.
So not in the mood for perfume generally, except that new Amouage Blossom Love makes me think of the flowers I won’t have! Sorry, super sad.
Winners of the By Kilian Black Phantom yummy sample – Janet in California, Artist, Karen Rondini and Barbara B. Just click on Drop Us a Note at the top, send me an e-mail, remind me of what you won and get me your mailing address. I’ll send you a quick e-mail to let you know I got your e-mail and it didn’t land in a spam filter and then get it on the way to you.
Drop a comment about your worst gardening disaster to be entered to win a sample of your choice of Amouage Blossom Love or the By Kilian Black Phantom.
Back to crying in my new kitchen.
I feel your pain, Patty. I live in the western suburbs of Denver, and spent all day Saturday planting new flowers and herbs I bought that morning. Monday afternoon, all hell broke loose, and a good 3 inches of golf-ball sized hail destroyed all of the new plantings. The siding and window frames on the back of our house are gouged with dozens of holes and 2-5″ cracks from the deluge. To top it all off, the roof is damaged and must be replaced. Luckily our cars were under cover and spared from the massive damage that so many experienced. I do believe that is the worst (and loudest!) hail storm I’ve ever seen here (and hail season is just starting!). Looks like the perfume budget (and the flower budget) will be taking a big hit for the rest of the year 🙁 I think I’d find Black Phantom a most appropriate choice to sum up this week.
I really hope your garden recovers!
Hail is so unforgiving! My gardening faux pas was putting ornamental cabbages out in our front flower bed one winter. The deer thought I had put out a salad bar just for them.
Ah, my deepest sympathies. The damn storms seem to know the best times to inflict the worst damage.
One of my favorite gardening books is The Undaunted Garden, (Lauren Springer) all about her garden in Colorado; she mentions hail and trying to cope with it. (Spoiler alert, there are no magic solutions!)
My heart is with you! This is sad indeed. Hopfully something will survive. My worst gardening experience was moving out of a rented house just to watch the (how can I put it?) not so spiritually evolved owner cut down everything I had planted over the years: avocado, lemon, lime, bergamot, Brazilian cherry, cambuci and guava trees, among others, many roses, sambac and grandiflora jasmines, a huge rosemary bush, several hybiscus… It’s still hard not to curse the vain old man.
I’ve had more gardening disasters than successes, I think. My grandfather had the greenest thumb ever but it didn’t get passed to me. This year my girls are in an after-school enrichment program and the theme is horticulture. Their group worked so hard to prepare the little plot of land the school gave them. They’re having a big event just before the end of school to give tours of their garden and it is such a pleasure to see how enthusiastic the kids are!
I’m glad you have an awesome new kitchen to cry in, but sorry to hear about the hail. The first real garden I ever planted — a beautiful herb garden — got hit with a hailstorm in July in Salt Lake City. It, and I, were devastated. The weird thing was that, while the hail was pulverizing the herbs, the smell that arose from that garden was the most beautiful thing ever. I was just staring at all the destruction as it was happening, but couldn’t leave the porch because it smelled so heavenly.
Hail! Oh dear, so sorry–it is my worst gardening nightmare and yet is has never been a problem here. I just worry about it happening to my lovely tomato plants.
My worst disaster is ongoing, promoted by a tall, bluebell-like plant I transplanted from a friend’s garden. (She had it in deep shade, where it behaved quite timidly.) Its tiny little seeds self-sow and come up every year, even after I pull the new plants out before they flower. I have tried to smother them with plastic. They invade my other perennials, so Round-up wouldn’t work, even if I could bring myself to use it. They are working their way toward the vegetable patch, where I plant my tomatoes. When they arrive there, I will probably just have to give up. I will never, ever be rid of them–the Bluebells of Doom!
Gardening disasters? I’ve had many. Mostly late and unexpected freezes. The worst was taking all 140-ish potted succulents and tropicals back outside before we went away for the week and returning to pots full of yellow mush because there had been an unexpected freeze. 20 degrees lower than forecast!
Probably the second most frustrating was a few years back when I had just finished my spring re-potting (and spent several hundred bucks on some gorgeous new pots) and a huge oak limb came down on the patio. Smashed every new pot I had purchased and a few vintage Mexican pots that were irreplaceable, not to mention all the lovely plants it killed or set back with damaged roots.
I feel your pain.
Can’t say I’ve ever experienced a hail storm like that. Incredible! Biggest problem with gardening for us has been with deer. Our neighbor calls hosta “deer lettuce” because that seems to be their favorite, along with the Stargazer lilies. I keep a planter by our front door and one of them climbed the steps to munch everything down to about 2 inches high. Ugliest thing for about 3 weeks but everything came back and while not quite as full, it looked OK. Now we spray every so often with some sort of concoction that smells like dog and cat urine. So gross, but we’ve not had a repeat performance. However, I often wonder what the mail carrier thinks the first few days after we spray!
Oh no! Hail is terrible. My worst disaster was actually my own fault. After we moved across town, I planned to go back to my old house (with the new owners permission of course) and divide the day lilies and hosta my mom had given me from her own garden before she died. I was waiting for our new fence to be built before transplanting (deer protection) and then discovered that the new owner had ripped out ALL of the beds and replaced with grass. (I guess I wasn’t clear enough that I wanted to have the plants). I’m pretty sure he just threw everything away. A few tears over that.
I haven’t had so many gardening disasters but I am young yet. The one that sticks out is from pretty early on- I was in late elementary school I think, and weeding in my yard, pulling up all of the new little trees.
There was this weird and kind of woody plant that had leaves kind of like a maple, but they were more fuzzy and shiny. No, it wasn’t poison ivy, but that would also have been pretty bad. I pulled it up and when my parents came out of the house a little later I brought it over to ask what it was. Dad’s face fell maybe 10 feet, he looked so horrified, even broken. Turns out it was a grape vine he had planted a year or two ago.
Still feel guilty.
But I think I made up for it because when I was in high school I got him to build grape arbor over the driveway with me, and now we have so many grapes. He even makes wine. I still feel remorse for that poor struggling little vine though.
Patty, I’m so sorry to hear about the hail catastrophe! All your hard work, and your plants, that’s so sad. 🙁 I don’t have any gardening woes, but I did have a rough last week. At my lab, which is being shut down because my bosses are leaving, we had a surprise visit from a government agency. Never fun, but especially when boss is out of town! But that went well, so I thought all was good…until Friday when our department head told me that my incoming new boss decided she is NOT taking the job, even though she’d signed a contract to come! So now it’s back to employment uncertainty for me. Ugh. But hey, I hope there’s bound to be good things to come, for us and anyone else dealing with disappointment and loss right now! 🙂
Ha – i don’t have too many gardening disasters because i don’t have a garden. However, i manage to keep one succulent alive – not sure of its real name but i call it my ‘money plant’ and i feel that as long as it is alive then i shall have at least a few pence in my pocket. I really don’t want the money plant to be a disaster………
Oh garden heartbreak! I hope you don’t give up, especially if gardening brings you joy.
When I first moved to Western Australia I didn’t realise that it is a desert and cried the day it reached 44 degrees and all my new plants went crispy and brown.
And I have lost count of the seedlings I have put in my community garden bed which have been demolished by slaters, scourge that they are.
In memory of your garden I would choose Blossom Love!
I’m so sorry about your poor garden! I lived in Colorado for a while, and I planted my first (extensive) vegetable garden there. It was all going beautifully until a similar freak July hailstorm decimated everything. I had no idea things like that happened there. We had about two inches of hail and it looked like someone had taken a weed-wacker to my thriving veggies! I cried for my heirloom tomatoes… For the rest of the time we lived there, my husband had tarps ready and would run out in any hail and stand there and protect the tomatoes! 🙂 Colorado is a brutal place to grow things, but it’s such a beautiful place to live!
I’ve never tried any of the Amouage fragrances but Amouage Blossom Love sounds lovely.
oh,that is so heart breaking…i have just planted a bunch of bulbs thinking i had full sun in certain areas of my small courtyard garden and i have just realized the multiple new 9 storey high flat buildings up the road block all the sun to my yard..it makes me so sad..there used to be light and now there is none.
So sorry about your garden! In the UK our weather is less extreme (come and live here!) but my small fig tree’s leaves are still blasted by a late frost this year. I don’t know if the trees can come back from that.
Not quite gardening, but you can kill a cactus!! Bet simple – you leave it in the car overnight in the middle of the winter.
I’m so sorry about your garden. A July hailstorm ruined one of my best gardens ever, and although it happened 10 years ago, I can still remember how angry I was at the elements ?. Best of luck with getting things going again.
I’m so sorry about your yard and plants Patty. Yesterday’s hail storm was terrible. South of Denver where we live was mostly rain; however, I can relate. Last year this time my neighborhood was hit by a hail storm and damaged our deck, windows, and decimated my plants in the back yard. I cried! The plants all looked terrible last summer but the good news is that most have come back beautifully this year. It’s so sad for the baby plants though. The last snow took care of my lilacs and the little lilies I planted last fall, they were just sprouting from the ground I adore Amouage Lilac Love and haven’t had the chance to sample of Blossom Love, I’ll bet it’s gorgeous and I hope it cheered you up.
Sorry to hear about your plants and all the ones you’ve lost over the years I myself have never did any gardening on my own but growing up i used to help my parents and occasionally they lost plants to disease, pests and the biggie to a late freeze. Probably couple of the worst losses they had were to freezes after we thought that their wouldn’t be anymore but they had a couple tricks for things like hail storms, the main garden area was in a smaller fenced off area of our backyard long enough for the garden but only about 7 feet wide and we kept a long rolled up tarp at one end of it attached to that end and on a piece of pipe that would simply roll across the top of the fence and set in place at the other end of the garden totally covering the entire garden when need be and for baby plants that weren’t inside the garden they kept lots of empty plastic 5 gallon buckets the kind like you get full of oil etc to simply cover the plants with set a brick on top and they make a pretty good shield for a plant. I’d love to try the Black Phantom and hope the hail stays away from garden for awhile.
I like the idea about the bucket over small plant, thank you!