Sure, August is the hottest month, but the temperature's got nothing to do with it. For most backyard gardeners, these 31 days are the culmination of 11 months of waiting and wondering and breathlessly anticipating the climax of the entire year. The month of May is but a flirtatious glance, a mere glimpse of possibility, a hint of a romance that may or may not come to fruition. But in August, we experience the panting, sweating, throbbing, uninhibited consummation of a relationship that began a few months back when we pressed a few vegetable seeds or seedlings -- firmly, gently, probingly -- into the fertile earth.
