A Late But Welcome Rain

 

The weather forecasts this past week have been really tentative. The approaching system ... we don't know yet where it is going to make landfall, we don't know precisely when it will arrive, we don't know yet how much rainfall it will produce... We've been listening to that, and as time for the storm (or "disturbance") drew near, we covered the tomatoes in case of hail.

Hail has been known to wipe out our cherry tree's blossoms, hail has beat the living crap out of our plum tree's fruit, so hail was not going to be permitted to blast my beautiful tomato plants this spring.

Rain began to fall last night, and continued through until morning. Around seven a.m. I heard the rain stop, so I rousted Kermit and took him outside. To my surprise, a branch was down, broken off on the north-side podocarpus. What you can see in the photo is only half of it. The other half is on the other side of the little fence.

I managed to free it from the fence, and had just enough moxie left in the old tanks to drag it to the front driveway, where it took up a lot of parking space. 

After breakfast, I went out to see where the branch had broken. I thought it might be one of the branches that rise up from the trunk, but this one had been a lateral branch. Apparently the weight of the all-night rain was enough to weigh its leaves down to a breaking point. 

There's plenty of tree left -- that's one of the reasons I like podocarpus as a privacy tree: lush, fast growth. In a month or so, you and I will not really be able to see where the branch came down. 

Thank you, God, for the rain.