I can't speak for everyone, but it seems perfectly normal to me

Normally I am like that but this year I am not. Yesterday a friend helping put plants back in the greenhouse and batten down the hatches was shocked I said no just leave it they are going to have to toughen up. I don't have time to mess with it. If the wind blows them to Childress well goody. I don't know what's come over me but after last year the stress of what happened made me so sick I refuse to allow that again. Don't get me wrong I still baby them to a certain extent but I put it out and trust all is well.

My kids have a running joke about me walking into the room full of tiny seedlings and shouting "My babies!" I was giving the seedlings more attention than them. I don't do that now, but with a few plants that I expect a lot out of, like the single little puny passionflower seedling growing among them this year.
I've had so many things happen that interrupted the plans that emotional detachment has become mandatory but the passion is still there. When I read our post I thought, Yep. She's a great gardener.

bon

Last year I finally had to tell myself to "stop it!". If a strong storm with hail came rolling in I'd be lying in bed wide awake inventing in my head a device that spanned my whole garden. I envisioned being able to have a retractable screen I could roll out and keep the hail from hitting the plants. Then I'd just roll it back when the storm was over.

I've learned to just deal with whatever is left when a storm is through with it. Nine times out of ten the corn that was lying flat on the ground straightens right back up and the plants with shredded leaves just grow new ones.

Yes. I too worry about seedlings. A couple days ago i was lying in bed and a storm rolled through at O' dark thirty. I heard the thunder and was chanting to myself " please dont hail, please dont hail, please dont hail!" There was hail. A couple if holes, a little bit of torn foliage but they are still standing. Im trying to stop worrying, and my daughter thinks im crazy but im trying hard not to worry so much anymore. I feel your pain.

Some angst probably is normal. I just try not to worry about the seedlings too much. They're fairly tough, want to grow and have good survival skills overall. As with children, you have to stop holding their hands too tightly and let them grow up, you know! We cannot keep our babies tiny and protected forever. Little fishies gotta grow up and swim, little birdies gotta grow up and fly, and little seedlings gotta grow up and become the larger, more mature version of their young selves.

Because I am a gardener in the great state of Oklahoma with all its wild, weird, wacky weather, I do take some precautions to protect young seedlings. The garden is fenced. The plants get cutworm protection. The garden is mulched. The beds, very early in the season---usually in March-April have hoops over each raised bed. Each hoop is covered with deer netting or bird netting, largely for hail protection. I leave the hoops and bird netting over the rows until the plants are established, or until I run out of hoops/bird netting. I have 13 raised beds covered, and enough netting to cover one more. In our garden, the hoops go up as I plant, so all the cool-season crops have hoops/netting, and so do the tomatoes, peppers and squash plants at the present time. I'm saving the last set of hoops and netting for bush green beans. All the other warm-season crops will be on their own, whatever happens. When the plants start hitting the deer netting, I remove it so the plants' growth rate determines how long the hail protection remains in place.

Hail has only demolished my garden in a very bad way one time since we moved here. I believe it was May. We had tomato plants and pepper plants loaded with good-sized fruit and the hail destroyed everything, breaking all the plants back to the ground and shredded everything. It was not a pretty sight. Other times we have had minor damage that was easy to clean up and the plants bounced back quickly.

Here we are discussing hail and I just got an alert on my phone that we could have hail up to 2" in diameter between Thackerville and Marietta. That's where our place is---in between those two cities. So far there's just really, really light rain here and occasional lightning, though some areas west of us got pea-sized hail within the last half-hour or so.

There's just no guarantees with gardening, so you have to brace yourself for all the things that could happen and accept that you cannot keep the plants safe from everything that might or could happen the whole growing season.

Okay, Tim says our sky is turning green. Y'all know what that usually means. I guess I'll go stand out on the front porch with him and watch to see if the green skies bring hail.

Dawn