It was lovely. We need to do something like this more often..
Itzhak Perlman was as impressive as ever. I’m still astonished that our little theater was able to book a performer of his caliber. The room looked to be sold out.
There were three selections scheduled (no Mozart, alas), with an intermission between the second and third. We were rather surprised to see Mr. Perlman leave the stage after the first selection, but he was having difficulty with his bow. The tone quality of his violin was noticeably uneven, so I suspect he chose to leave the stage to select another bow.
When he resumed, he launched into Strauss’ Sonata for violin and piano in E-flat Major, Opus 18. This piece has three sections. I’m sure he was surprised at the vigorous applause at the end of the Allegro (the first section). The audience quieted, and he went on. When they tried to applaud at the end of the Andante cantabile, he waived his hand in a little “no-no” gesture, and went on.
He’ll probably remember my town as the “Hicks in the Sticks.” It seems that a large part of the audience has not experienced a classical performance before. The rules of the road for this type of performance are that you applaud only at the end of the piece. Despite all this, I’m glad so many inexperienced concert goers attended. I hope they’ll tell others what they learned.
Perlman was quite funny about the applause. He had to be coaxed onto the stage with extended applause after his third selection, Three American Pieces by L. Foss. At that point he had to announce the selections he was going to play for us. At one point, he said that he’d been talking to Mr. Strauss out in the back, and that Strauss said it wasn’t necessary to applaud between movements. *G*
There must have been easily 1000 people in the audience, probably more. Of all of those people, just ten were poorly behaved. Just before Perlman started to play the Strauss, someone’s cell phone rang, right at the front, near the stage! Someone else was rattling candy wrappers. Several other people felt it was okay to walk up the aisles as he played. This is another of those situations where I mourn the switch to more casual manners. Many of the members of the audience had no idea what was expected of them, but most rose to the occasion. It was delightful to see so many people enthralled with classical music!
Thank you, Itzhak Perlman, for a wonderful concert!
Nursery Trip #2
I received a call last night from the nursery, to let me know that the Homestead Purple Verbena was in, and I had twenty-four hours to pick it up. Doesn’t that seem like a rather short time frame?
At any rate, I wanted to return a clematis and pick up the verbena. I stopped at the checkout, and explained that the tag in the pot of clematis said “Nelly Moser,” but it was labeled differently on the outside of the pot. I wanted to make an exchange. They told me to leave the pot at checkout and look for the “Nelly Moser” that I wanted. Of course, they were out.
So, I started working my way through the nursery toward the annual section. Along the way four little pots of basil, and two more of lemon verbena grabbed my arm as I went by. I rounded the corner at the veggies, coming into the stretch, when two pots of tomatoes jumped out in front of my cart. I HAD to rescue them.
While I was there, I thought I might pick up a morning glory that was already two feet tall, but they were out of that, too. This beautiful cardinal vine tempted me instead.
I FINALLY got to the annual information desk, and asked for the verbena. Neither of us could count. I’d ordered nine and came home with seven. BUT….while I was waiting, I found the morning glory I wanted! *G*
Some days ya just have to go with the flow. I’ve got a LOT of planting to do, and I’ll have to make at least one more trip to the nursery. Do you believe that I walked out of there without any dill seed!??
Oh, NO!
The time has come that strikes every woman’s heart with fear. My hairdresser has retired.
I feel so abandoned. She’s gone without a farewell, or even a hint that she was thinking of this.
And what’s worse, is that I have a perm scheduled in two weeks! One of the other stylists has done my hair occasionally, and she will step in to see that my hair continues to get the care it needs. But…..I used to be able to plop myself down in the chair and let K do whatever needed to be done. Now, I’ll be asked, “What would you like?” And I don’t have a CLUE!
Yes……I’m hair inept. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but my hair does what it damn well pleases. I’d SO like to have a fashionable hair do, but that implies that I might have to actually DO something to achieve that state. It’s just not going to happen. When the fashion of the day is BALD….I’ll be right there!
Until then, wish me luck settling in with a new stylist.
Thursday Treat
We have a rare treat in store for us tomorrow night. Dear Husband and I will be going to hear Itzhak Perlman perform. Last fall, when the list of performers for our local venue was published, I bought tickets to three different performances: Stomp, Garrison Keillor, and Perlman.
I love “classical” musicn and would go to any concert of this type, but I chose the tickets for Itzhak Perlman because Dear Husband goes around whistling arias by Mozart. I think they may have scheduled something by Mozart for this concert. It was DH’s birthday gift last fall. He’s had to wait a LONG TIME for it to come to fruition.
We’ll go to dinner, and then head to the concert. We’ll be up later than usual for a week night, but what a great reason to stay up! I won’t have pictures on Friday morning, but I’m sure I’ll have comments about what I expect to be a great performance!
She LIVES!
Nan has posted! She’s met the challenge of 50 head on and come through it just fine. Go visit to see what she had to say, at Just My Opinion.
Renovation
I spent a large part of my day renovating a small portion of the NE wing of the herb garden. I’ve had a section of lamb’s ears in this part of the garden for years. I don’t know if lamb’s ears can strictly be considered an herb or not, but I like the pale gray-green color contrasting the darker leaves of the thyme. Lamb’s ears has a way of escaping and moving to other parts of the garden. It seems to really like the chat walkway, and I like how it looks there. I probably need to cut back some of the growth in the walk, but today I focused on the lamb’s ears in the bed.
Unfortunately, it has become infested with crab grass. I started work, and realized that the soil was so dry that I was never going to get all of the roots. Dear Husband said, “Either you water, or you wait.” He’s really good at cutting to the chase. I didn’t want to wait, so I hooked up the hose. I watered that section of the bed, and while it percolated through the soil, DH and I dropped a car off to be worked on tomorrow.
When I returned, the soil was ready! I used a shovel and lifted huge chunks of the garden out onto black plastic trays from the nursery. When I had grass and plants, and dirt removed, I ran my hands through what was left, to be sure that I wasn’t leaving a nest of roots behind. Then, I separated the grass from the soil, put the soil back, and replanted the lamb’s ears.
There are several areas in the thyme to the right of that area that will need to be replanted. I’m going to transplant one section later this week, and may find a few more crab grass roots to remove.
I think I may put lemon-scented geraniums in that spot, or perhaps lemon verbena. A good part of that arm of the herb garden is devoted to lemon scented plants.
The really healthy plant at the bottom of the herb bed is a perennial salvia. Just past it, in a terra cotta furnace flue, is Scottish spearmint. There are two small lavenders. (If they don’t do well this summer, they’ll be transplanted.) There’s a miniature rose just past that, in a ring of hardware cloth. I uncovered the rose today and found very tender growth on it. I protected it from the sun (and will have to continue to protect it for a while till it hardens up), and left the ring to protect it from hungry bunnies. The lamb’s ears are just past the rose. You can see the clematis at the arbor, just north of the bed.
I know, I know…..too much detail. I had a wonderful time in the garden. I quit before I was overwhelmed. I left enough time to clean things up and return my tools to the garage. Dear Husband cooked dinner tonight, so I got to come in and loaf. It was a fabulous day, and I’m SO pleased to have gotten a start on the gardens!
Clematis
The past few years my clematis has been suffering. It’s a wonderful jackmanii that is covered with deep purple blooms in the spring. Its leaves were loosing their dark glossy green color. I did some research on-line and decided that it needed chelated iron. I found a source and gave it a dose and the leaves looked better the following year.
We repeated that scenario, but this time the plant began to look really sickly. I read further and found that there was something contagious going on. I decided that I was going to give it one more shot before planting something else in that spot. I cut the canes to the ground and disposed of them. I pretty much figured that would kill the plant off, but I was very surprised to see it growing this spring.
I started my day in the gardens by creating guidelines for the clematis, to help it up and over the arbor. I used hemp twine, anchored on either side of the plant, and wrapped around one of the upper horizontal bars. I used one more length of twine to keep the plant upright, until it grabs onto the vertical lines on its own.
I have high hopes for this plant. If it makes it, I’ll post a picture when it blooms.
Garden Repairs
The herb garden has been in sad shape for several years. Dear Husband constructed it for me as a wedding present about seventeen years ago. The timbers he chose did not stand up well to the test of time, so this time he decided to work with cedar.
This is what the northwest arm of the garden looked like before he got started:
The fifteenth of April, DH started ripping out the old timbers and rebar. Second Son got the chore of moving all the crumbing wood out of the work site. The timbers had to be measured, then cut to the right length, and then drilled so they could be dropped down over the existing rebar. Here’s a shot of DH drilling away:
There are still two long timbers that need appropriate underpinning. The top timber has been measured and dropped into place, but we need to improve the foundation for the timber. A great deal of water flows through the herb garden during spring melt, and DH feels that we need to consider either brick or block foundations for these two areas. When we are done with the repairs, we’ll truck in a load of tailings or chat, and resurface the walkway, so it’s likely the underpinning will never show.
The herb garden is much safer now, so I’ll be able to let visitors walk through it. With that in mind, I have one entire arm to replant, and several other areas to renovate. Dear Husband gave me a hand with the weeding while he was working on the bed. Unfortunately, one of the things he “weeded” was lavender that I’d been babying for several years. I teased him about it. The lavender wasn’t happy there. It likes drier soil that isn’t as fertile, so I was going to have to move it anyway.
I may use part of that northwest arm for tomatoes this year. I’m also renovating the veggie boxes this year, so I might get tomatoes sooner if I use the established garden. Tomatoes from my own garden…… sounds like a bit of heaven!
At Last!
At long last, I’ve had the chance to spend my weekend in the gardens. It got off to a slow start on Saturday. Dear Husband rebuild the sieve that fits over the wheelbarrow so that I could empty the sidewalk containers and sieve the soil. In some of the largest pots I use a layer of plastic shipping peanuts to lighten the load, so I need to catch the plastic as I break up the soil and remove spent plants.
The sieving and refilling of the pots took longer than I had anticipated. I moved the pots onto the sidewalk near the front door and Elegante Mother played with the collection of plants that we bought earlier in the week, working out combinations which pleased her. Rather than planting all the pots in an identical range of color, each pot has it’s own personality. I know that’s unusual, but it’s what makes EM happy.
I think we filled seven pots with annuals. Elegante Mother was playing with plants the way she might sweep watercolor over paper. This container is a wrought iron basket lined with coir.
Supertunia Priscilla (lavender), Colorburst Melon Calibrachoa, “Peter’s Wonder” Coleus,
“Lemon Symphony” Osteospermum hybrid, Madeira Violet Argyranthemum. and
Red Snapdragons.
“Gay’s Delight” Coleus (Lime green with red-violet stems), “Happy Violet” Exotic Geranium, Dracaena marginata “magenta,” and “Merlin’s Magic” Coleus fill a gray-green container.
Elegante Mother used the same coleus in this pot, with a different, lighter look:
“Gay’s Delight” Coleus, “Colorburst Chocolate” Calibrachoa (deep rose), “Needlepoint” Coleus (cut leaf with lime green, cream and scarlet), Ipomoea “Blackie,” (dark sweet potato vine) and
“Snowstorm White” Bacopa.
And one more that I like for it’s simplicity, and for the interesting pot:
I think I used Bacopa, with a dark red petunia, and a lighter coleus. I can probably look up the plant names if you need them.
So, the containers have been planted for the season. I have a couple more pots that are basically research. I’ve planted two small poinsettias that have carried over from Christmas, and another pot that has overgrown calla lily greens. I don’t know if they will make it, but it was worth a try.
Dirt. I actually had dirt under my fingernails! (goofy grin).
Boat Widowhood: Entry 1, 2007
Boating season in the Chicago harbors on Lake Michigan starts May 15. Dear Husband will be having the Arr!! craned into the water the weekend after the fifteenth.
Today, the UPS man delivered the new sail. DH is going to be like a dog with a doggie treat when he sees it sitting on the floor!
Dear Husband did the first mowing of the lawn Monday and Tuesday. He’s also trimmed a tree that is hanging over the SW corner of the house. He’s trying to get chores out of the way so that he can focus on the Arr!!
He’s done just about all the varnishing on the boat (I think), and he’s going to let the yacht yard take a look at the engine before he takes it to his new mooring.
If you’d like to go for a boat ride on a 32-foot Bayfield, send me a note. Dear Husband takes people along for the sail. I’m going to post a message on the family message board that they need to make their reservations now! *G*
And, before you ask……no…I won’t be sailing this year. Think of all the gardening and quilting I can get done, and the visits to the antique fair and the farmer’s market! No sailing for me.