Visitor From the Prairie

It's the solstice today, and so summer begins. The Prairie Princess came to visit for the weekend and to check on her native plant garden. She arrived last night about 11:30 and even that late we turned on the yard light so that she could have a look at the plants she planted before she left for the prairie. Only one of her specially selected plants failed to thrive, and most look really good. She put in some time this morning thinning the weeds and the more aggressive of the natives. Here is a photo of her standing among the prairie plantings.


Herb was around most of the day, too. He was a little under the weather, but was willing to pose next to the tomato plants he helped me plant some weeks ago. They are growing pretty fast now that the weather has decided to be summery. The weather creatures are predicting a string of rainless 80 degree days



It was a very nice morning in the city. I hit tennis balls for about 45 minutes at the court near the curling club and then visited the farmer's market by St Luke's Church. The veggies are still sparse at the vendor tables. No tomatoes for sale yet. There were onions, lettuce, pea pods, rhubarb and asparagus. And there were flower plants for sale for late season planting. It seems like the season is late. The tomatoes should be coming to market soon. My own attempt at urban tomato production is still some weeks away from fruition, and the national sources of tomatoes seem to be having salmonella problems, so I'm hoping for the local growers to start getting those sweet ripe tomatoes to market.

Incidentally, my tennis stroke was not anywhere near zone-hood today. The zone comes and the zone goes.