And Now a Little Something for the Gardeners in the Audience

This summer has been non-standard: winter lingered on to the end of April, and we didn't have a "real Spring" (with tulips and daffodils) until late June. July was very cool, we closed up the house to run the air conditioning maybe 4 or 5 times (think back two years ago when July 4th started a 5 day run of temps well over 100 which sparked a power outage that lasted 4 days...so I guess we weren't running the air conditioning then, either) and we have only really had unpleasant weather for the past 10 days or so: overcast, very humid, always on the edge of a thunderstorm but never quite getting there (perfect migraine weather) which is very odd for August, which usually has hot dry days and cooler nights. Despite everything being either reversed or upside down, the flowers and trees all throughout Flint are better than ever and, best of all, have seemed to require no maintenance whatsoever. For the first time EVER, we have been able to grow basil, parsley and chives in our yard. I should have put something in here to give a sense of scale, but those basil plants are at least 3 feet tall and the parsley is a small floppy hedge. The chives are off to the right, but they are equally lush and healthy. They haven't quite reached the "Burpee Seed Catalog" measure of success. (This is a catalog I used to get before people stopped sending out catalogs in the mail. It hyped every single plant as producing flowers "the size of dinner plates." The pictures always featured miniature children happily posing next to seemingly elephantine plants. Every morning I walk past a house in our neighborhood that has a hedge of towering hollyhock plants with truly humongous flowers. They really are the size of dinner plates.)