What a Storm!

We had a major hail storm yesterday afternoon. Although I have seen larger hailstones during storms before, I've never seen this much all come down at once. It was quite amazing and a bit scary at times. I thought we might end up with some broken windows or damage to Richard's car, but luckily our windows are OK and his car didn't get dented. I'm hoping our roof didn't get damaged, but I may need to have an insurance adjuster look at it just to make sure.

The plants I had in container and in our garden are another story. A lot of them had leaves shredded off and stems broken. I'm hoping that the tomatoes and other plants will recover...especially several rare varieties of Pelargoniums...

Here's a picture of Weezer inspecting the hail an hour after the storm was over. There was still plenty of hail left on the ground in places. There are even a few small piles left this morning:

This one is a view of some of my container plants during the storm.

This is a view of our patio area during the storm:

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day Weekend ended up being anything but a vacation for us. On Saturday, we painted our family room and the entry way from the garage into the basement. We were able to get it all finished except for some touch-up work that I did on Sunday. We still have another bedroom, bathroom, and hallway in the basement left to paint.

Sunday was a more relaxing day. I had a horror movie marathon with one of my friends during the morning and early afternoon. We watched "Demons", "30 Days of Night", and "Return to House on Haunted Hill".

On Monday, I mowed the lawn, did some gardening, and watered the flowerbeds. The ground is very dry here right now, so I hope we get some rain soon. The storms on Sunday passed to both our north and south. I was hoping for a good rain, but we didn't get anything at all...maybe that was for the best considering the severe weather than the storms brought to the northern Twin Cities suburbs and North Central Iowa.

Spring Pics

Here are some photos of flowers that are currently in bloom at our house. The first one is a couple of daffodils. The second is Dead Nettle. The third is Virginia Bluebells. Enjoy!

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Basement Update

The drywall work has finally been finished. Drywall Services (DSR) did a very nice job. They even patched and touched up some things in addition to what we'd asked them to do. So, now I can start to think about painting. I even have a color in mind...

We're going to have a change made to the drainage system that was installed in our back unfinished room. They'll install 8 more feet of the system. It should take care of the few remaining damp spots that we've noticed from the spring storms. I still don't know if the sump pumps have ran yet, but the basement has really dried out nicely.

Weekend Wrap-up

It ended up being a rather busy weekend. On Saturday, we moved some things around in the back room of the basement. We wanted to get it ready for some additional work relating to the drainage that we want done. One of the things we had to move was the freezer, so we sorted through some of the stuff in it and threw away some old food items.

I also spent a fair amount of time doing gardening. A friend brought over several types of ferns, some Canadian ginger, and some tomato plants. The maidenhair ferns are just too small yet to plant in the garden, so I'm going to let them grow in their containers for awhile. This year, I'm also going to try to grow the tomatoes in containers. The area where I tried to grow them last year was just too shady. I also planted some seeds for shade flowers and did a few other outdoor things. It's great to be enjoying the nice weather outside.

The daffodils are finally starting to bloom at the house too which is great!

Saturday night, we watched a couple of movies. We saw "The Covenant" and "Stardust" both were excellent. I had seen the previews of "The Covenant", but it didn't look all that great. So, I was surprised when it turned out to be so much better than the previews made it look. I hadn't seen any previews for "Stardust", and I knew nothing about the plot. It was a nice surprise too. I'd definitely recommend it for fans of Fantasy films.