An Asterisk.

Oh, July. Reentry into 27401 goes like this: there is a math that attends days and days away from the garden, from the flowers, from the WeatherHeadery. Back on the radar: tomatoes, old book, new book, a busted upstairs A/C and the glory that is the home warranty—the dulcet tones, on one's home phone, of a gentleman sure to know the ins and outs of a capacitor switch in a compressor/condenser fan, and sure, too, to arrive and fix said fan forthwith. We have been away. Now we are not.

July welcomes much of the ANYLF staff back with a big Sunday evening storm, better than an inch, and a big Monday evening storm, right at one inch. Much thunder, much wind. Much dog trembling underfoot at the kitchen table. An asterisk is herewith to be appended to July's rainfall totals, but not to the year's totals, and we feel good about this, because if it's good enough for baseball, it's good enough for ANYLF—due to the fact of some watering that wanted doing Sunday evening, the rain gauge, which showed 2.7" after Sunday night's outpouring of downpouring, is believed to be not entirely accurate (for that storm). Performance-enhanced, if you will, by the hosing activities of the early evening. Having no real way to determine what's right and what's wrong other than a gauzy half-hour spent on the front porch watching it rain like all living hell, we're just cutting that number in half. It was that or have all the interns submit their best guesses on small slips of paper and then average the numbers. I actually think we might be a little low at 1.35" for Sunday night, but we'll err on the side of caution. 2.35", then, here at 709 over the last two days, and that after what was about five weeks of crispy, crispy weather. Welcome home, indeed. And, asterisk-wise, we feel good enough about those numbers to say that the official ANYLF yearly total for 709 is as accurate as it was ever going to be. This isn't rocket science, people. It's just meteorology. Also, it rained in some bowls that have been living on our back porch, and which have pretty damn flat bottoms, so I dunked a ruler in there to double-check for good measure.

ANYLF hasn't much been around the interwebs of late—things have either been very, very busy, or very, very not, depending. But, friends and fans of weather, if it's weather we're again going to have, and if last night's storm and the storm of the night before are any indication, then it seems like, yes, it is going to be weather that is going to be had by us, well, then, we're back. Fully staffed. We've called the interns back from far-flung Florida, and we've tied the tomatoes back up to the deck. The clock tower at the church just through the backyard is playing our song. The light, if you've noticed, is dragging itself piecemeal towards autumn. Time, perhaps, for a redoubling of our efforts. Or just a doubling in the first place.