Over the weekend I looked around the yard at the wildly blooming lilies and pots full of colorful flowers.  I was happy to have harvested 5 more tomatoes along with lettuce, sugar snap peas and green beans.  The cukes were blooming their heads off and vining with big, full leaves; the zucchini and summer squash just birthing the first, small fruit.

I was thinking: nice.  Everything is in bloom and green and enjoyable with so little work from me right now.  All is well.  All is as it should be.

Loud tornado warning sirens and unexpected gusts of wind last night night changed all of that.  Two storms blew through with hail and torrential rain from 11 pm until the early hours this morning.

Very suddenly, things have changed.  Without warning there has been loss.  I looked around at the wreckage early this morning and I see that some things are gone.  Flowers petals were beat from their stems and litter the ground with green leaves.  Shrubs are flattened, but given time will likely pull themselves back up by their bootstraps.  But there is loss.  Some damage is too severe.   Some things will never recover.

Pictured above: the mowed-over hollyhocks, the battered elephant’s ear; I think the onions gave their lives for this volunteer marigold which is seemingly unscathed; and the pummeled lemon cucumbers.  Sad.

Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Hab. 3.17, 18

 Some peppers plants are finished now, leafless.  But they provided protection to the plants to their right.  Dave’s mammoth grill gave some covering for some of the tomato plants and the herbs held up pretty well.  The things that will survive will be all the more treasured now, with greater gratefulness. 

Thank-You, LORD, for what remains.