Holding down the Farm...

I spent last week at Stanford watching the professional women play tennis.  I got to see some of them in person for the first time including Vicktoria Azarenka, Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovich, Aggie Radwanska, and Yanina Wickmyer.  I also won tickets to a San Francisco Giants Baseball game when I caught a ball that was hit into the stands by the Bank of the West Bear mascot.

Maria Sharapova lost to Vicktoria Azaranka in the Final of the Bank of the West Classic

I'm now at home trying to harvest all the lavender and get my dahlias ready for the fair next week.  This evening, I had to take time out to rescue a fledgling kite.  I would have liked to have left him alone, but he was sitting on the ground shrieking, and I was afraid that Lucky (my cat) would find and pounce on him.  Lucky seems so nice until he sees a bird.  The rescue woman called and inquired about trying to put him back in the nest, but I explained that the pine trees are at least 30 ft tall, maybe taller.  She said she would try to return him to his birthplace after his flying feathers grow out. He is really beautiful.

Baby raptor (white-tailed kite)

Jon is already in Tadoussac with his brother Jerry and friend Bob.
From the internet:  Tadoussac is a village in Quebec, Canada, at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence andSaguenay rivers. It was France's first trading post on the mainland of New France and an important trading post in the seventeenth century, making it the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in Quebec, and the oldest surviving French settlement in the Americas.