Sliced...

The top picture is a very thinly sliced cucumber from the  garden, right before I popped it into a cucumber and tomato sandwich.  The bottom one is the cut end of several phormium...fronds?...that I cut off and noticed made quite an interesting pattern.

Today is OilMan's birthday which we celebrated by going to his favorite nursery and buying him a new pieris plant. Then we had to go to the land of pots for a big pot for it. It is actually easier to wrestle with a big heavy pot and a big heavy plant than to dig a big enough hole to plant it in the ground. Dana came along to help us choose, and spent the afternoon in the 97º temperature, some of it in the shade of the umbrella, planting some new plants she bought for the back patio...what we call 'the mounds'.  It now looks lovely and she has gone home to recuperate!
 
We are itching to watch the recap of today's Tour de France after Mother Nature won yesterday's stage. I feel sorry for Julian Alaphillippe, who might have been able to catch up on the descent, but once he saw the situation at the bottom, even he must have had to admit that the right decision was made. Not a good day for the French either with Thibaut Pinot abandoning....

I can't imagine how they managed to get all those team buses turned around to go back and pick up the riders, and where they took them once they did...a nightmare of logistics....

Here in Santa Rosa there is a triathlon going on today which is snarling traffic also. The fast finishers may have been able to beat the heat, but the afternoon must have been brutal for the slower ones.