Fantastic community turn up on Saturday for bird habitat planting. What a huge contrast in the weather! Cool in the morning, warming up as the day progressed, with beautiful blue skies.

Around noon, small grey clouds appeared from time to time, each dropping a few large raindrops. These a quick bucketload of raindrops from a large black cloud and back to sunshine!

Plants all in the ground – over 400 at the last count – and all well watered in.

Then another large very black cloud covered the sky and most would have seen the resulting massive hail storm on the TV news. Of course, Popes Glen and its environs did not miss out – I was still outside putting equipment away. It was impressive. Our decks collected uncountable marble-sized stones of ice.

After the cataclysm, I walked back to the worksite with some trepidation as to what I would find. All was well! Not a single plant damaged that I could see; all were either well protected by overarching existing foliage or their plastic guards. Those without protection didn’t seem any the worse for wear – those being mostly Dianella and Lomandra.

So this is what it looked like about noon.

And this at about 2 hours after the storm had passed.