Container Garden Update... Thunderstorms!

All of us at Veggie Trader are back from our respective short vacations to Asheville, NC and California. Vacation was great, but we were chased by massive and horrible thunderstorms Tuesday on the way back home from California to Portland. There's nothing like encountering quarter-sized hail on Interstate 5 in the southern Oregon hills to welcome you home!

Here's what the sky looked like shortly before all hell broke loose:

Happily we escaped, but unfortunately the unsettled weather decided to slowly follow us north. Yesterday Portland was hit with a severe thunderstorm. Our deck container garden suffered through it for a good hour. While our trees survived the ferocious winds nicely, our peas didn't come out entirely unscathed. They weren't looking the best before the storm, but now they're really looking pretty sad. Still, each stalk is sporting a few budding peas, so we're going to give them some TLC and see if they make it. Luckily we decided a couple weeks back to hold out on releasing the rest of our tomato and pepper starts to the outdoors until after we returned from our trip, so they are unharmed. We've been hardening them off and plan to transplant them outside permanently next week. We're also going to plant some basil. Hopefully the weather is ready to cooperate and treat our garden well!

While in California we noticed this bookstore window display...

This was spotted in Nevada City, a gold rush era town in the foothills where the shops now tend to cater to tourists instead of miners. Interesting...