A storm rolled through the area on Thursday. There never seems to be a nice, easy rain here, just a wall of water that has tipped over somewhere and arced ungracefully to the ground. There are two rain scenarios in the garden: drought; and cleaning up after the deluge.

Fewer than half of the corn stalks in the Country Gentleman and Golden Bantam plots are standing now. Every storm takes one, but now that they're taller, this storm took down more than its quota. Never mind that all of the corn stalks are weird and thin from being transplanted anyway, and just waiting for some pressure to bend and then break.

The Black Aztec plot had even more problems—the transplantation problem plus my thorough misunderstanding of how much light that area gets, or maybe it was the gazebo we put on the deck taking away an hour of light. Those corn stalks are weird and thin and not very stiff—prone to bending over on a good day, especially those stalks that had pole beans growing on them.

I've been looking out of the second floor window for three days after the storm, annoyed at the state of the Black Aztec plot. None of the good ones were standing anymore, only two or three dwarf plants (out of a starting plot of sixteen). I would check it out from the window, see the sad and bent plants, brood over the lost effort. But I couldn't be bothered to go down there.

Today I went down there to check things out and do maintenance.

There was a branch from the oak tree above laying on several of the stalks.

...

So maybe if I had checked that out on Friday the corn might have picked itself back up again, at least a little.

Sometimes it's the mundane details that get you. Sometimes it's the big thing that gets you, but you don't notice because you're too busy considering the theory of forests instead of the tree that has fallen on you.