After tweeting with my friends, I decided to conduct a seedy little experiment: I sowed sunflower, zinnia, marigold, cat grass, and lettuce seeds on July 4 to see whether they'll bloom (or be ready for harvest) yet this season. Betcha they will!

I'm a bit of an experimenter and like to test things everyone says are true. For example, I've discovered black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia sp.) do well in shade, even though they're a full-sun plant. They don't get leggy and they don't spread as aggressively, but they still get those happy yellow blooms for a bit of color in a shady location.

Likewise, most seed sowing is done earlier in the season, right after the last chance of frost in mid to late May. (Unless of course one winter sows, which one does, but that's a topic for another day.) And for good reason: most vegetables require two to three months until they are ready to harvest, and this is Michigan. We have got to make sure our veggies are ready before the snow flies again! And we also want to see our annual flowers bloom as long as we can, so starting seeds in May makes sense.

But what else works? My friend had her sunflowers stolen (plant theft is a major issue facing Chicago-area gardeners--seriously!) and was wondering whether it was too late to resow some. I have never sown seeds this late in the season but I told her to try it and see what happens.

And then I realized two things: 1) sunflower seeds are pretty darn tenacious (look at these four growing in my front yard in the shaded center of a six-foot tall ninebark shrub, likely deposited there by birds or squirrels from the feeder in the backyard) and 2) I have a bunch of sunflower seeds I meant to sow in May but never got around to.

So I went ahead and tried it myself. I moved mulch to the sides of my most sunny bed, watered the soil, scattered sunflower seeds in the empty spaces, covered them lightly with soil, and replaced the mulch over the top. And as long as I was at it, because at some point you just can't get any hotter or dirtier, I sowed some zinnia and marigold seeds in another part of the same bed. I'm watering them in diligently, which will be critically important in this heat.

Rifling through my tin of seeds, I found a few other annuals to sow. The first, cat grass, sprouts in a few days and is ready for your cats to eat in about two weeks. Cat grass is available in seed packets from nurseries and pet stores, but you can also get it much more cheaply at feed stores. Ask for oat and wheat grass seeds, in the smallest quantity they sell. A pound should cost well under a dollar.

I also found seeds for two kinds of lettuce, an heirloom variety, 'Merveille de Quatre-Saisons' and a variety for smaller spaces, 'Garden Babies Butterhead.' Interestingly, the former has oblong light-colored seeds and the latter tiny black spherical seeds. They take about 65 days to mature, which puts harvest right around Labor Day.

Popular wisdom might dictate I wait another month or so to sow these because lettuce is a cool weather crop and, well, it's freakishly hot now. Fair enough. I'm all for giving plants the conditions they want. I really am. But I'm also curious to see what will happen. I have a lot of shade and once the seeds get going, I think I can find a cool (or at least non-scorching) location for them.

I sowed the cat grass and lettuce into separate window-box sized containers, which are perched atop my garden cart, out of reach of the many critters in my backyard. I will let you know how everything does.

Things to do in the garden right now If your mums have buds already, cut them off. This will encourage the plant to grow bushier and it will set new buds in time for fall. Asters are very tall already as well--you can cut them back as far as you feel comfortable to delay the blooms until fall. My native asters are about 6 feet tall and I'm going to cut them back a good foot.

Monica Milla, the Garden Faerie, is a master gardener volunteer, garden speaker, garden coach, and author of "Fun with Winter Seed Sowing."