Poor little seedlings. Poor, POOR, little seedlings…you never stood a chance.

I planted you, fed you, watered you, cared for you and looked over you since the day you woke up and now look at you.

You’ve been beaten up by the wind and now I fear the worst for you.

You did great when I put you outside under the shade and protection of the trees. It seemed that you were ready to transplant in just a few short days. But alas, your lives were cut short by the ravishing wind.

When the wind first started, I thought it would end quickly, but as it dessicated your tender little bodies, I knew there was nothing I could do. It was too late to take you in and shelter you from the storm.

I know I could blame myself, but I can’t. The high desert is a tricky place to grow. I took my chances and now I need to start over.

“I should’ve, could’ve and somehow” seem a mute point, for if I were to plant you, would I dig you up from your garden bed to protect you?

These are the perils of gardening in the high desert my sweet little seedlings. Rest in Peace.

I know I’ll be able to save a few seedlings, but not all of them. The tomatoes were hit the hardest. It wasn’t the cold that made them shrivel up like a prune, it was the wind that sucked the life out of them.

All I can do is baby them for awhile, and start over with new crops directly seeded.

We do have an extended growing season, but the sun, regardless of how cool it is outside is strong enough to burn new plants…even after hardening off, the wind- unforgiving.

For this reason alone, we haven’t pinned any hopes of making money off our crops. Starting over will mean waiting even longer for the fruits.

Not only were our seedlings decimated, but also our fruit trees. The wind had to be over 50 mph to make the fruit separate from the branches. Our apricot tree dropped all the fruit, save one. The peach trees lost a few and as far as I can tell, the pear trees still have their fruit.

We’re not done with the wind storms. Sometimes there are warnings, and other times they just come up upon us and ravish our garden and its children.

I am a bit disheartened, but I refuse to give up by sticking my head between my legs and kissing my ass good-bye.

Any seedling that has stood its ground during the wind storm will be planted.

On another note, the wind storm also has its affects on us and our home. Sand from the storm gets into every orifice, nook and cranny. It coats everything in the home in a layer of dust.

I chose to keep the windows and doors open during the storm because of a burnt bean incident that left our house smelling nasty. Candles kind of helped, but getting fresh air blasted into the house was the best way to rid it of the charred burnt bean smell.

Not too long ago I was cooking beans in an enamel cast iron dutch oven. As usual I left the beans on the stove to cook over night. Well, this time the beans burned in the night and by morning the whole house was saturated in a thick cloud of burnt bean smoke.

It got into everything! Clothing, shoes, hair, skin…EVERYTHING.

I’ll take sand in the house coating everything over the smell of burnt beans. Odors are hard to get rid of, but grit from outside sand is easy to clean.

For the most part the smell is gone…now comes the fun part of cleaning it all up. 🙂