Disaster Strikes

Disaster struck at the "farm" last night.  All day, we had been driving back to Pennsylvania from a great week-and-a-half of vacation in Maine - a scenic journey with loads of incredibly slow traffic and some wicked thunderstorms.  Since we returned quite late, we slept in (as far as was possible) and arose around brunch-time.

Brunch didn't come quite as easily as we had thought it would.  There was a small amount of victuals in the refrigerator, left over from the week.  Milk was all, though.  We decided to hit up the local doughnut shop, which serves freshly fried cake doughnuts (topped decadently with syrups, sprinkles, bits of candy - it's like a hot version of an ice cream sundae) and also sells somewhat local milk.  The milk comes in glass bottles, which is a nice throw-back to the days of milkmen and re-using before recycling.  One of these bottles has been sitting atop our fridge since the last visit we made to the doughnut shop.

Anyway, we drove uptown to discover new road construction, a new sign above the pretzel shop, and the fact that the Frying Dutchman is closed on Mondays.  A catastrophe! Plans foiled all at once!

Crossing the street, we thought we'd try the new crepes shop in town ... which is also closed on Mondays.  Typical restaurant behaviour.  Ugh!

Our initial brunch idea of hot doughnuts and (homemade) toast turned into dippy eggs and fried scrapple with toast.  A visit to a local Mennonite grocery provided fresh turkey scrapple, which was super delicious.

We finally got through our first meal of the day and went to the community garden.  Upon entering the gate, we could not see our plot.  This was absolutely shocking, because a week ago we had two enormous sunflower plants - the branching-out-like-a-bush variety - that had just begun (finally!) blossoming at 9 and 11 feet tall.

Running over to our plot, we discovered the horror of the two dead sunflower-trees, laying in ruin across half of the whole plot.  Our twelve tomato plants were slightly blown over in the same direction.  The sunflower trunks had snapped at the base and were laying across and crushing our zucchini plants.

The horror!

The agony!

The devastation!

It was awful.

To our chagrin, we spent most of the afternoon cutting through the wreckage.  Blooms were collected and snipped for enjoyment at home.  By looking at the number of blossoms and buds-to-come, we figured that in a month, we would have had several gallons of sunflower seeds for eating.  All a loss.

There were no vessels large enough for all the blossoms we collected, apart from an 8-quart stock pot.

On the upside, our green bean plants are happily climbing their trellises, and eggplants are joyfully producing purple and white fruit.  We collected a large number of tomatoes today - one pink beefsteak weighed 2.25 pounds!

Later, it was made known that the severe thunderstorms we witnessed in Massachusetts and Connecticut had also made their way through Pennsylvania.  High winds.

Rest in peace, oh loveliest of sunflowers.