Plants of the Week

This green looking veggie is a red pepper, but a red pepper in its green stage. It is growing in a pot in my back yard (MBY). It has a Latin name, capsicum annuum. It is a plant which is native to Mexico and northern South America and was carried to Europe in 1493, presumably by Chris Columbus. I'm waiting for this one to turn red to indicate that it is time to be feasted upon.

An interesting note: green peppers are unripe bell peppers, while the others are all ripe, with the color variation based on variety. Because they are unripe, green peppers are less sweet and slightly more bitter than yellow, orange, purple or red peppers.


This tomato plant is also in MBY. It is also a native of Mexico and South America and is a member of the night shade family. Tomatoes have the reputation of out producing the needs of single family growers. I have two plants and suspect that I may be eating more tomatoes than are really necessary. My Wilson tennis racket and hat for scale. My dad would only eat fried green tomatoes, because, he claimed, that he had eaten far too many of them as a child growing up in Wisconsin. I, for one, have not yet reached that stage of satiation. I have, however, indulged in frying and subsequently eating green tomatoes and have found them tasty enough to try again.


I had a day off from the tennis wars. It was cloudy and cool and probably would have been a fine day to crush some forehands. I did not. It was a day to lounge around a bit, mow the lawn, and solve one of those pesky New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles. The one I "solved" had a theme based on the sayings that can show up when one uses the famous "magic eight-ball" to tell one's fortune. One of the answers: "It is decidedly so." The question: "Are you made out of plastic?" The puzzle was a difficult challenge. It also required the name of a Theater of the Absurd pioneer (Eugene Ionesco) and several other arcane pieces of information.

Blueberries.

Sunday Crosswords

No tennis today. It was a beautiful day and I was outside quite a bit. One of the tennis crowd had an open house this afternoon, so I spent a couple of hours talking about tennis and the unfortunate closing of the Lilydale tennis facility. And how sorry we are that the new owner is losing his shirt because the real estate market, especially for condos, seems to have tanked. He has yet to demolish the old building and seems to be in arrears on his property tax payments, according to interested and informed sources.

The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles had one of those nasty little gimmicks today. The title, "Buried Treasure" was meant to refer to the gimmick: use the symbol for gold (AU) in a single square in selected words to answer a clue. There was reference to Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" song and a requirement to supply some of the lyrics. Thankfully, google knows almost all things, even 53 across, the first Shia imam, Ali. "I've been a miner for a heart of gold" are the Neil Young lyrics.

I close with a photo from the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis on the mighty Mississippi. The new Guthrie Theatre is in the middle of the photo, with the "bridge to nowhere" protruding towards the river. There were people on the deck when the photo was taken. It offers a high view of the collapsed 35W bridge, but at a considerable distance.

Playing on the Clay

Monday night is tennis with the old guys. Tonight we played at a new place. Dennis is nursing his injured hip and was unable to play. Our sub tonight, George, belongs to Somerset Country Club in West St. Paul and he invited us to play on the clay at the club. Curt and I arrived early enough to sweep the court smooth and sweep the lines, a necessary ritual for playing on clay. This photo is Curt starting the job while I climbed a nearby hill for a vantage point. And the tennis was pretty good, too. We played two sets of sufficiently close tennis and then George and I won a third set in a tie breaker. It was a very pleasant evening after the torrid heat of last weekend.


I finished the New York Times (NYT) Sunday crossword puzzle today. It had a baseball theme and used a technique that I usually don't like, but seemed ok in this one. A few of the answers had whole words fit into a square. The words were "home", "first", "second", and "third", and were arranged on the page like a baseball field. For instance, the 66 across clue was "commoners" and the answer was "third estate" with third crammed into a single square. The down clue was "Precede the the cleanup spot" and was "bat third" - "third" in the single square. There were some other clever clues and answers as usual, but I've beaten this dead horse enough.

As an aside, my stat counter disclosed that I have been a google hit eight times for "waters of tener" aka "water softener" from last week's NYT poser. Technology rules.