On Monday July 20th, we drove home from Joplin, MO all day, arriving home to a beautiful evening about 6:30 PM. We unloaded, swept out the van, ate supper, (including our first - and only - zucchini of the year) unpacked, and fell tiredly into our own beds after 10-days away from home. Then, without warning, about 9:30 PM it started raining really hard. About 11:00 PM we we awakened by loud hail with 30mph wind as it attacked us, and it continued for a couple of hours! We all leapt from our beds and looked out to see the ground whitened, probably about 1" deep. We've had that several times this summer, but the 1/2" hail stones, and especially the force with which it came, had a totally devastating affect on our poor little garden!
We will likely (sadly) make it through the summer without any garden, but many area farms received similar damage - with fully ripe wheat -ready for harvest - flattened, 8-ft tall silage corn striped bare, etc... really sad to see.
Here are a few pictures of our garden as it looked after daylight on Tuesday morning...
Look at the damage to these tomato stems!
This was not helpful to this poor spaghetti squash plant...
Our beans were pretty sparse, due to early hail storms, but....
Beyond the beans are the three hills of zucchini...so sad 
We really did have 13 tomato plants, looking really good before the hail.
Have you ever felt this way?
This shows everything but the tomatoes, which are off to the right...
Jeff picked all of the green tomatoes that were big enough to use, and a bucket full of green beans, which were yummy!
We choose to have a family philosophy that all we are, and all that we have, belongs to God, so we have reminded each other this week that it was the Lord's garden, and He has every right to destroy it with hail stones anytime He chooses! He will provide for our healthy nourishment in other ways this year. Then today we were pulling weeds at the Museum with another lady we know and she said that they have more green beans and zucchini than they can use, so please come pick whatever we can use from their garden! Thank you, Lord!
