Well that wasn't much fun...

Mother Nature can sure be cantankerous.  Friday wasn't a good day for her and in turn it wasn't any better for us...

 That, my friends is some extremely large hail.  Not just a few here and there, but as you can see below we received a plethora of extremely large hail.

 We received quite a bit of damage.  There are holes in our garage roof and huge dents in the cabin and barn roofs.  The garage also sustained broken windows and shutters. My garden art did not fare well.  All of my bird feeders took a direct hit.  Anything that was wire and was hit by the hailstones, folded like a cheap suit.  The bird house I made lost it's roof.  Thankfully, nobody nested in it. If you look below, you can see it completely broke out 1/2 inch wood slats from my swing.  Just imagine if it had hit someone in the head.

 I am also thankful that my husband was home and Ella was in the cabin with him.  The photo above is the tarp that covers her kennel and it provided no protection.  My husband said it was terrifying.  He kept waiting for the stones to go through our cabin windows, there were tornado alarms going off on the cell phone, and he wasn't certain if a stone wouldn't actually go through the roof.

 Every plow truck in our little community looks like this.  Yesterday, when we drove to the store to get a new mailbox (ours took a direct hit and there isn't much left) we saw many vehicles that looked as bad or worse than this.  I couldn't imagine being caught in your vehicle during the this storm.  I should have been coming home about the time it hit.  Instead I was at work planting some cherry trees with the students, again I am thankful.  In many places there are two to three inch divots where the hail hit.

It doesn't matter where you live, Mother Nature has something to remind you she is in charge: Hail, tornadoes, volcanoes, blizzards, hurricanes, fire, or flood.  With her there is always a reminder that with the good there is also some bad.  I am just thankful nobody was badly hurt.  Things are replaceable, even my favorite bird bath.  To leave on a positive note, these little buggers are baby flycatchers.  Every year she nests in our paperbox.  Lucky for her, we don't get the paper anymore.  Flycatchers are notorious for nesting in bad spots, but these little fellas are safe and sound.   Hope the weather is a little nicer in your neck of the woods.  Let me know if you have ever been through a hail storm with hailstones that big or bigger.