Recently, I’ve had a lot of complaint about our lack of rain. I found some wide cracks in our yard because it’s so dry and every day I’ve been watering the garden. I would much rather have Mother Nature take care of the watering for me, but today when I checked the weather they uttered the word “Derecho.”
For those who aren’t familiar with a Derecho, it’s basically wide (about ten miles wide) and long (about 100 miles long) clusters of thunderstorms that produce massive amounts of rain and straight line winds. While I want rain, I really don’t want rain in the form flooding rain and if the rain doesn’t drown my garden, the winds associated with a Derecho could wipe out my garden.
I suppose I should be worried about my house since a Derecho can do significant structural damage, but somehow I’m more concerned about my garden. It’s my first year of successfully starting my own seedlings and I’ve been thrilled to see little green tomatoes on my tomato plants. I have a jalapeno pepper on one of my pepper plants. I just planted my herbs in pots around the garden (I may bring those in the house tonight), cabbage which is almost ready to harvest, tomatillos with an abundance of flowers on the plants, grapes vines with lots of new growth, Lili’s first little watermelon vines growing, Naomi’s bean garden thriving, peas beginning to produce peas and little green strawberries that will soon turn red and be ready for consumption. So much love and hard work has gone into my garden this year and I shudder to think that a Derecho could leave us nothing but a soggy mess.
For now I’m keeping my eye to the sky and regularly checking the national and local weather for updates. Fingers crossed that all we get is some rain and a little bit of wind for a bountiful garden this summer.
worldofweeks 
Uh-oh! I hadn’t heard this. I think we live closely enough together that I better start crossing my fingers, too.
I heard earlier that this may move further south, which could be your area, so keep an eye on the weather.
I so hope this skips all of us! Rain, yes! Torrential rain and straight-line winds we could do without! I had to laugh at your earlier reply about the storm moving further south……I heard it may move further north and miss us! My fingers are crossed for all of us!
Cross your fingers tighter because I just watched an 8:30 report from a Peoria meteorologist who said the storm is now tracking south of I-74 – Logan, Menard, and Mason counties should be along the northern edge of the storm. Still predicting a lot of rain with this storm, but didn’t say much about the wind.