This year I have a great crop of early purple penstemon volunteers in my sky garden, many more than previous years! I also had some beautiful small lupines, but they really got drowned by the hail and rain we had on Tuesday. My other penstemons are also doing fine in spite of the hail.

I also have a new experiment I planted last May, a “Blue Velvet” Honeysuckle bush (Lonicera korolkowii ‘Floribunda’) that was extremely happy until an inch of hail fell on it.

I started to notice which plants withstood the hail and four inches of rain best. Lavender could care less about hail. It is such a woody plant. Catmint suffered a bit, but is coming right back with its purple blue flowers now. Russian Sage seems to stand up to bad weather well, and the larger yarrow plants are OK too. That creeping thyme is amazingly resilient!

I had the cutest little Hissup plant that was just getting started and its leaves got so trashed, as well as the new leaves on my Blue Mist Spirea bushes

Does anybody know if those will come back this summer? I sure hope so. That is one of my favorite bushes in the garden!