Saturday Snaps

It's a concert day, from Berlin, but a morning concert here, starting at 10:00 am. with live streaming half an hour before the baton first marks the beginning notes.

I settle myself with my knitting and await the arrival of the orchestra.  The cello's are already in place, and soon the audience is clapping the orchestra on to the stage.

More clapping and the first violinist arrives, -  and the orchestra starts tuning up

The guest pianist, Helene Grimaud arrives, and the Russian conductor, Valery Gergiev.

The concert opens with the first few bars of Beethoven's Fourth Concerto in G Major, - a small piano solo, and then the bassoons, the clarinets, the french horns and cellos and the flutist join in.

My knitting falls to my lap, and I am mesmerized by the piano, and the expressive, quiet intensity of the andante movement.  I think 'what marvelous things mankind has learned to do with fingers and an apposite thumb'!

The Rondo is more vivacious and I find my foot tapping to the rhythm - so beautiful.

I take up my knitting again during intermission, and I must confess also during the Prokofiev symphony that follows, -

I am so impressed with Helene Grimaud, who is not only a young French pianist of considerable note, but also a writer and an animal activist.  So talented, and so serene at the piano in contrast to some who play beautifully but are painful to watch.....

The concert is over   It is lunch time and a I rustle up some yogurt and an apple and take them down to the loom room, where I spent yesterday and finished a blue tea towel and started a pink one, and now I must wind pink bobbins and see how much of my stash I am going to be able to use on this last bit of this warp, - and before I start another!!!



The sun is shining brightly, - no clouds in the blue, blue sky, but the wind that has blown them all away is a trifle chilly, so after a bit I find my garden gloves, put on a coat and gather some bulbs that I want to plant......

Here is a picture of the lovely blue crocus I bought at the grocery store a few days ago. (well, it was more purple, but my phone camera sees blue!)

They were beautiful for a few days, but then  the blooms faded and died, and I thought if I dug a couple of small holes I could just ternderly empty the pots into the garden and hopefully next spring they will poke through again ....so I did!

I couldn't resist a beautiful Hellebore in full bloom as I passed the flower corner (in the store) and came home with a gorgeous plant, which I also plan to put into the garden as soon as the weather says O.K., - now!!  Callie is finding it difficult to find space on the table that flanks the front window, where she sits and says menacing things to visiting cats, what with pots of bulbs and flowering narcissis and the amaryllis that is slow to grow.

My son-in-law has been busy in the garden, doing things that I find difficult now - and in the case of the great repair job he has done on the garden shed, things that I never could have managed.  However, he brought an extra wheel barrow to the garden, and how could I resist filling it with bits of prunings and dry leaves and the ever ubiguitous  cutch grass that I am trying to remove from amongst the flower beds.

I had a little nip of sherry, - warmed up a beef pot pie that has been awaiting me in the freezer, and now I shall say good-night and after my nightly session with gmail, and facebook and Skype, I will go to bed and sleep contented with the day......

A little poem that makes me feel that way, - contented!

Praise What Comes

surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved
of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather.  Praise

talk with just about anyone,  And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger;  nightfall and walks
before sleep.  Praising these for practice, perhaps

you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended.  At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions;  did I love,

finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God?  At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began and another

ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

Jeanne Lohmann