We've been under a tornado watch since Noon that will continue until 10PM.
Meanwhile, it's been raining all day, with some storms being severe with high winds and hail. I looked out the front window a little while ago and found our courtyard flooded with 3 to 4" inches of rising water. That's a first!!! So, I decided to step out on the slightly elevated porch to get a photo. No photo of the deep water in the rest of the courtyard. It was raining too hard for me to try to step outside far enough to get a shot.

However, when I opened the front door, I encountered this scene. Whoa! the rainwater in the gutter had turned into a waterfall with twice the intensity of what you see above. That was pouring directly into one pot with flowers that I just finished planting 2 days ago. Seeing that over 1/2 the soil had been blasted out of that pot, I forced my poor husband to go out into the deluge to try to move it a slightly. The blue empty pot, just in front of the drowning plant, also had soil and was ready to be planted. But by the time that I saw the front porch situation, all the dirt in the second pot was totally gone and there was about 4 inches of standing water left in the pot.
Initially, things actually looked a lot worse than my photo above, done later.

In all honesty, I'm starting to get really discouraged about the entire project of relandscaping the courtyard. It's been 14 months now... Nevertheless, although the landscaper hasn't been moving along as quickly as I would like, I still have steadily continued to get the things I need for my part of completing the courtyard. Last week, I bought the pots for the butterfly bench area. Then, I planted 7 of them on Saturday. Now, it's Monday. And Mother Nature has dealt a blow. At the moment, I feel like I've taken two steps backwards.

The Coral Bells plant (right bottom) was one I had purchased for on my back deck. However, since the landscaper said he can't source this particular plant for the Coral Bells grouping I plan to have him install, I am adding my plant to those plants he can find.

I guess one good side is that if the courtyard had been newly planted (as I anticipated back on April 15th), the flooding today would have been far more disastrous than it has been. Luckily, only my newly potted annuals have been affected. Except for weeds, there is nothing else currently in the courtyard.

We'll have a couple more hours or so to wait to see if the next series of severe storms (to the West) will bring tornados this evening or just more heavy rain. There are currently two nearby tornadoes: one just north & one just south of the Metro. Even so, we should still be okay. Neither of those is headed our way.