Red Admirals

It was a near perfect day in the Saintly City. It was so nice that I needed to spend as much as possible of it in the outdoors. I went to Crosby Farm Park, down by the big river, just to walk around. There were a few million black and orange butterflies fluttering around in the park. They must have all emerged from their cocoons in the very recent past and they were everywhere. Not quite a plague of butterflies, but more than I've seen in one place of this variety. I think that they are called Red Admirals.

I walked around Upper Lake and along the Mississippi.   There were a lot of blue wild flowers blooming in the shadows in the forested areas.  As I approached the end of the route around Upper Lake, I heard the loud chirp of at least a hundred thousand frogs in the swampy areas near the lake.  I think that they were perhaps feeding on the Red Admirals.  I think frogs eat butterflies.  Here's a look at Upper Lake at Crosby Farm Park.  It seems early for so much algae in the lake, but there it is, perhaps the result of our early spring, or perhaps the lake's location down the cliffs from St Paul neighborhoods and their lawn fertilizer.  Usually the lake is much clearer than this.

The group of geezers (sometimes known as the cadre of codgers), me included, played an hour and a half of tennis this afternoon, again at Marie Park tennis courts. It was eighty-ish, nearly windless and very pleasant to be outside.

I found out today that my old Hamline tennis coach, Ben Lewis, who served from 1958 to 1964 was selected to enter Hamline's athletic Hall of Fame for having coached three teams to the MIAC conference team championships. I was lucky enough to be on all three of those teams, so I'll be attending the induction banquet at Hamline in October. Unfortunately Doc Lewis died last spring, but he has two sons who will be happy to represent him at the banquet.