Go away for three weeks in July, and what usually happens? A sudden onset of Gobi Desert.

Go away for three weeks in July 2008, during which, the stats tell me, there was 171% more rainfall and 5% more sunshine than normal, and return to a world gone wild.

The water-loving hydrangeas are weighted down in white, slowly turning chartreuse. The morning glories have become the morning glories that ate New York. And the single tomato plant that I left to fend for itself in the backyard bed is a sprawling Attack of the Killer Tomato.

Yikes!

We won’t mention the weeds. If we mention them, it might make them real, rather than figments of my science fictional imagination. So shhhhhhhhhhhh.

There. That’ll fix ’em.