Saturday Garden Update! (plus a thunderstorm story)

There was incredible crack of thunder last night at 3:16 am...it was almost comical how cartoony it sounded. And how terrified I was as it nearly catapulted me off of my bed. The flashes and pounding rain and incredibly loud thunder kept me up for about an hour...it was beautiful.

The east coast isn't really known for thunderstorms...at all. When I went home the first summer after quals, the last real thunderstorm I had heard was the summer before. But in the last three weeks, if it has rained here in Boston, it has thundered. Very odd.

"Some of the most powerful thunderstorms over the United States occur in the Midwest and the Southern United States. These storms can produce large hail and powerful tornadoes. Thunderstorms are relatively uncommon along much of the West Coast of the United States, but they occur with greater frequency in the inland areas, particularly the Sacramento Valley San Joaquin Valley in California. In spring and summer, they occur nearly daily in certain areas of the Rocky Mountains as part of the North American Monsoon. In the Northeastern United States, storms take on similar characteristics and patterns as the Midwest, only less frequently and severely. During the summer, air-mass thunderstorms are an almost daily occurrence over central and southern parts of Florida."

from Wikipedia (unfortunately, even by using "climate" in the search, I had a hard time finding anything about the historical presence of thunderstorms here)

So it seems like thunder can certainly happen here (I attest to that!) but it is much rarer than it is in the Midwest.

I went up to the garden around noon, checking to see if there was any damage (nope! plants...they're resilient!) and trying to come up with a brilliant way to stake my tomatoes. You see, I have no idea how to stake a tomato beyond finding a stick and tying the stem to it with a twist tie. And then I read gardening blogs and get scared because the instructions for staking tomatoes are PAGES long. These are patio tomatoes, so they aren't going to get very big...but still...with the wind, apparently stakes are a good idea.

[there's a bud! It's kind of hard to see, but you'll be able to see it next week, I think!]

[Pesky cilantro, keen on bolting (sending up flowers)]

[Parsley, finally looking greener than yellow!]

All the girls moved out today...it feels oddly quiet yet still full of lots going on (the redcoats! they're here!) I'm stuck inside for most of the day due to the rain and the having to read a zillion million papers for my lab meeting on Tuesday, but maybe I'll get some time to take a break soon. I'm still waiting on the outlet to be installed in my closet so I can plug in my chest freezer (freezing as many summer fruits as I can!) so everything I own is kind of...everywhere. Messy. Ugh. Hate that.