Iris

Saturday
The day started with a lovely surprise just after breakfast, when there was a heavy knock at the door, and it was a lady delivering a beautiful flower arrangement in shades of pink and purple, a Mother’s Day gift sent from my daughter Laura, who lives in Kuwait!  It was hot and humid today. We went hiking at Rowe Woods this morning, but I wasn’t feeling very energetic. We took a different trail today - one we hadn’t taken for a while. Most of the trail was just through the woods, not past any ponds or meadow areas like some of the others, but it did descend initially through their terraced garden and herb garden, where they had a number of iris growing, some deep purple and some lilac, as shown in my Blip. Since it is one of the more outlying trails, it seems to be less popular than the others, so we had it pretty much to ourselves for most of the time. I had a quiet afternoon, then prepared an early dinner, as we were going out this evening to the final concert in the Cincinnati Symphony Series, and we decided to go down early to hear the pre-Concert talk about the featured pieces of music. We were glad we had got down there early, as it was a popular concert, and then there was something else going on in Memorial Hall next door, and a big event going on in Washington Park across the road! It was a great program, beginning with a Schumann overture, followed by Brahms violin concerto, featuring the Canadian violinist, James Ehnes, and finally Beethoven’s Symphony No 7. At the beginning of the second half, there was a special presentation made to two of the orchestra members, one the principal bassoonist, and the other principal viola, who were retiring after 30 and 37 years with the Symphony! The viola player was a woman, and as the conductor pointed out, when she joined the orchestra 37 years ago, symphony orchestras were very much a man’s world, so that must have been an amazing accomplishment for her to land a position with one of the leading orchestras in the country!
One year ago: "From sea to shining sea"