Today was nice, 80's F, cool breeze. Last Tuesday night we had a severe thunderstorm, the one that rode the jet stream all the way across Indiana and Kentucky, 80-mile-an-hour winds. I was caught out in it, did some stupid things, but survived. We were without electricity for three days, many homes in Kentucky have been out for a week.

We've also had an extremely wet Spring and Summer. My garden, the first I've grown in ~25 years, is doing well. I've been picking three 40-foot rows of beans nearly everyday for several weeks. I've made over 30 quarts of bread-and-butter pickles, and I already have two pumpkins that are several feet in diamter!

Joe, I'd love to see the wild flowers there. One of my favorite Charles Kuralt episodes was of fields of flowers.