Hail and Hummingbird

Devastating Hail and a Visit from a Hummingbird.
My grapes are blooming and sending out new branches like crazy! The flowers are minute inconspicuous and greenish, but because they are in a cluster, they are more visible than if they were to be bourn individually.
We had a seriously bad hailstorm here yesterday afternoon. I missed the event, but observed the drifts of hailstones and the damage afterwards. Several cars had their windows smashed and their bodies dented, and buildings with older shingles had the shingles beaten off. There was also a short spell of flooding in some of the older homes as the subsequent downpour was quite intense and the soil was already wet from previous rains. I am sad to report that a lot of fruit was beaten off of my nanking cherry trees.
Yesterday I spent most of the day out at the farm transplanting beaked hazelnut seedlings into the permanent orchard and weeding. I did a quick scan to check for forest tent caterpillars and there weren’t any more, which proves that Dr. Evans was right about squishing them with a broom. The horse chestnut is absolutely loaded with flower spikes! I have never seen it this full of flowers, so I spent a couple of minutes enjoying watching the insects attending to the flowers and was pleased to see that not only ants were collecting nectar, but real honey bees! That made my day, so I set about some serious weeding as Equisetum or horse tail had made definite inroads in the west end of the garden. I had only been weeding for a few minutes when I heard the distinctive sound of a hummingbird: sure enough I was able to watch as the ruby throated hummingbird checked out several flower clusters before flying off northward.
The blue camas was almost finished blooming: by next weekend there should only be seedpods forming. The mariposa lilies and osha root are blooming. I am sorry to report that I forgot to bring a camera. Next weekend I hope my memory won’t fail me in this respect, so I can share some pictures with you.
The starling chicks in the back yard are almost ready to leave the nest. My neighbors to the north appear to have killed a baby crow as there was one lying on my boulevard right next to their drive way. The house wren is still nesting in the purple martin house in the front yard; happily greeting each day with its bubbling song. There is something in that particular song that is so very cheerful and uplifting that it is the very essence of the happy side of spring. Hope to have more time for pictures next week. Good gardening. MM.