Bull Thistles

The creatures de weather promised a sunny day. It was not quite what they predicted at first, but later in the day it got very nice. Not necessarily "One of the nicest days in the history of days" days, but much nicer than our recent days.

Before the usual Wednesday tennis mixer, I took a walk at Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary to see how the summer vegetation was doing. I hadn't been there since my recent journey to the tournament at Roland Garros. I was pleasantly surprised to find a great abundance of wild flowers growing in the open meadow. Granted, some of then were bull thistles, but a lot of them were delicate blues and yellows spread across the terrain. PP wasn't around to tell me what this odd flower? is, but she'll be back from her political meeting later and I may find out. It was nestled among a lot of native looking grass, so I'm hoping that it's something native to Minnesota. It has a resemblance to, but is not, a dandelion. [Ed. note. PP says it's goat's beard. Who knew?]



And, of course, there were the bull thistle flowers - surprisingly attractive and colorful. You don't often see them included in bouquets, but that may just reflect the danger in picking them. I'm not sure why they're called bull thistles either, but PP called them that yesterday. I think it may just because they are are so big.



The afternoon tennis was fun. We had six of the geezer gang, and we played a kind of round robin doubles event. We don't finish whole sets in this format, because we switch opponents after a four game mini-set. It's nice to just be out on the courts on a day like today. I got my complement of sun and exercise and feel much the better for it tonight. "I love this game."

There was World Cup soccer again today, too. The big surprise of the early rounds happened today when underdog Switzerland took down one of the favorites, European Champion, Spain 1-0. I've managed to watch pieces of nearly every game, either live or on the ESPN highlight show in the evening. It's as good a brand of soccer that you'll probably ever see. After today, I think they are about 17 games into the 64 game tournament