Longfellow's Flower

It was a nice day - coolish in the morning with a clear blue sky. I walked around the grounds at Minnehaha Park and revisited Minnehaha Falls to see if the volume of water was up from July. There was a nice strong stream of water flowing in Minnehaha Creek and over the falls. I didn't include a photo, because the falls has been shown several times before in this space. Besides, I shot this lively blue flower at Longfellow Gardens, just across Hiawatha Avenue from the park. The bees and butterflies evaded this shutterbug, but the flower is pretty. For the benefit of KS, there is also a significant prairie restoration project in progress there by the creek.


There is also a nice statue of Hiawatha and his princess, Minnehaha, at the park. It's a little off the beaten track, but stands very near the creek. It was erected in 1911, so has stood there 96 years.


So much for Minnehaha Falls. I also checked out the hiking trail around Lake Como to see how the cleanup of the multitude of downed trees was going. I would call the progress exceedingly slow, but work men with a truck and hoist were there and they were removing dried up branches and leaves from ex-oaks and ex-ashes. The guy operating the hoist was working and the other five guys were watching. They'll be done with the cleanup by snow fly, I expect.

Tennis tonight at Marie Park. I played in the lower range of acceptable and my team lost both sets. It was a beautiful night, however, and it was enjoyable just to be out in the weather. The other guys appreciated the wins and didn't indulge in cheap taunting. Not a bad outing, all in all.

The U.S. Open continues. I watched a couple of sets of Nadal winning his opening match against an Aussie qualifier who was ranked about 125 in the world. Nadal is number two. Nadal also seems to be having knee problems. He probably plays too much tennis, and from today's action I'm pretty sure that he won't make it to the finals this year. That's just a guess, of course.