70-68!!!!!!

Lots of diverse activities today. The World Cup had to take backseat to the marathon tennis match at Wimby. Finally, John Isner, the 6 foot nine USA tennis phenom, managed to eke out a victory in the fifth set of his first round match with qualifier and unseeded French guy, Nicolas Mahat, 70-68. Unprecedented. It was a combination of two guys who had big serves and who also were pretty bad at returning big serves. You can see why the tennis powers went to tie breakers at most of the grand slams, except for the fifth set.

World Cup news. Italy. the defending champion, is out and Japan is into the knockout phase of the biggest sporting event in the world.

The photos today are of backyard projects. PP is growing the "three sisters" - beans, corn and squash - in backyard pots. They seem pretty healthy, too. Tennis racket for scale.



My heirloom tomato experiment is behind schedule, mainly due to my trip to Roland Garros. I started the three plants from seeds back in April and transplanted them outside after my return from Paris in early June. It was a little later than planned and the plants were smaller than I had projected. But they are beginning to thrive and I have hopes for some tasty heirloom tomatoes before the first frost. Wilson racket for scale.



Later in the afternoon the geezers and I gathered to try some tennis competition. It was a great day for tennis in Minnesota and a great day to work up a decent sweat. We played two pretty competitive sets in an hour and 45 minutes and felt fatigue creeping in. The Isner-Mahut match in Wimbledon went over eleven hours on three different days. I feel a little like a piker, except that I am more than 40 years older than either guy. I don't think that I recorded any aces either, whereas the Wimby match had over 200 split between the two big hitters.