oh the weather outside is frightful

It's been freezing these last few days!  Well not literally freezing but a high of 11C which after a few years in Melbourne feels like freezing to me.  And at 4:45 this morning I awoke to what sounded like a rain of bullets on the roof.  Not bullets but HAIL.  We got hail late last winter, not long after moving here, but this was even more hail than last time.  Here was the first look out the window over 2 hours later at 7am.

Even before waking up all the way I kept thinking ... I just planted pansies!  Oh no!  And indeed the back bed was looking mighty wintery.

But luckily everything back there is pretty tough, the pansies will be fine.  I was worried the broccoli would be riddled with holes from the hail but whilst the lettuce isn't looking too flash the broccoli just laughed it off.  It looked like a cauliflower from the ball of hail in the middle!

And finally a few pictures from down the street.  It almost looks like snow which makes me a little wistful for northern hemisphere winters.  But only a little.  I appreciate the idea of snow much more than the practicalities of dealing with it.

I like this photo because of the contrast of a palm tree and hail (no that's not my yard).

The weird thing was, I only drove about a block down the street before the hail disappeared.  I'd heard we'd have "localised hail" but I didn't realize "localised" meant "only over my house."  On the upside though, I now have 40mm in the rain gauge since Friday which is one of the best shows so far this winter.