July 14: Today is Bastille Day, the national holiday of France

July 15: St. Swithin's Day

July 16: National Corn Fritters Day

We have satellites and Nex-rad radar and the TV weatherman to tell us what sort of weather to expect. But in past centuries, farmers and gardeners could only look to the skies and depend on folk wisdom for their meteorological forecast. The St. Swithin's Day rhyme is a good example.

Saint Swithin was a Saxon bishop of Winchester in the ninth century. According to legend, he asked to be buried outdoors, so that "the sweet rain from heaven" could fall on his grave. For nine years, that's where he stayed—until the Winchester monks decided to move him to a splendid shrine inside the cathedral. The ceremony, planned for July 15, 971, was rained out, or so the story goes, and the rain continued for 40 days. Hence the prediction: foul weather on St. Swithin's Day will bring 40 days of rain—but not often enough to make it a reliable prognosticator, according to British meteorologists.

But there are other weather proverbs that might help:

• If the leaves show their undersides, it's about to rain.
• When the dew is on the grass, rain will never come to pass.
• When you hear the rain crow call, the rain will fall.
• When the wind's in the south, the rain's in its mouth.

If these don't work, try looking at your garden. Clover, chickweed, dandelions, morning glories, anemone, and tulips are said to fold their petals prior to a rain. If the marigold opens before seven, you'll soon hear thunder; if it stays open all day, you're in for sunshine. More reliable, however, is the bog pimpernel (Anagallis tenella), also called shepherd's weather glass and poor man's barometer. It is immortalized in this quatrain:

Pimpernel, pimpernel, tell me true
Whether the weather be fine or no;
No heart can think, no tongue can tell,
The virtues of the pimpernel.

And for predicting the temperature, try your local rhododendron, which furls its leaves as the temperature rises and falls: completely closed at 20°F, completely open at 60°F.

For the low-down on weather lore, check out Weather Proverbs: True or False?

If you're French, celebrate Bastille Day. You're not French? Celebrate it anyway, by baking a classic Quiche Lorraine. Bon appetit!

If you're wondering what you can do about the weather (climate change, that is), give some thought to new life style choices. We can all do something, can't we? For instance, we can create a Victory Garden, and reduce those "food miles" our veggies travel from farm to fork. We can make some good dirt. Learn how in Let It Rot: The Gardener's Guide to Composting. And we can be informed. Read Tim Flannery's bestselling book, The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth.

Go on a picnic. An herbal picnic, that is. Here are some goodies you'll want to take with you, with recipes. I particularly recommend the pasta salad with garlic chives—just the thing for those garlic chives that are taking over your garden!

Make a batch of corn fritters for your summer supper. Try this recipe for fritters with roasted garlic and parsley dipping sauce. Super with a salad and a bowl of China's dilled tomato soup.

Learn more about corn. It's in the news these days, because we're turning more of it into biofuel and less of it into food. (Is that really what we want to do?) For every kernel of information you'll ever need to know about this staff of American food life, read The Story of Corn, by Betty Fussell.

For more about herbs and the passing seasons, read China Bayles' Book of Days.

To find out what's going on in Susan Albert's life in the Texas Hill Country, read Susan's blog.