Today was the great basil harvest:
The green basil was planted from seed while the purple basil was purchased from Walmart. Both survived the mid-summer onslaught of insects that wiped out the onion crop and threatened everything else (even the marigolds were temporarily reduced to unrecognizable nearly-bare stems).
"In the central portion of the great North American Continent there lies an arid and repulsive desert, which for many a long year served as a barrier against the advance of civilization. From the Sierra Nevada to Nebraska, and from the Yellowstone River in the north to the Colorado upon the south, is a region of desolation and silence." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet