Philly and Newark and Rain.

4-4-17 SHORT HILLS: We have had April showers aplenty. We were behind on yearly precip, but now must be almost caught up, Friday and Monday both gave us a few inches. The snow piles are almost gone, the remaining amount would just fill an ice tray.

Saturday we went to Philly to see old friends Stephen and Bob and Christine. Steve took us to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for an exhibition of watercolors featuring Homer and Sargent and and others, before and after. No museum visit is complete without our inspecting their Impressionist collection. Later Bob and Christine joined us for dinner at Twenty Manning Grill, good food, but too noisy for geezers.

Sunday we did a dog walk with friends Bebe, Ron, Annie, Gus, Maizie and Bally in the afternoon, and in the evening we went to NJPAC for the Munich Philharmonic. We heard Don Juan by Richard Strauss, Piano Concerto for the Left Hand by Maurice Ravel performed by pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and after intermission, Eroica by Beethoven. Valery Gergiev conducted. The audience loved all three pieces.

Meanwhile back in the yard, I have been doing chores and watching for recovery from damage brought on by the early warmth and injurious later freeze. The butterfly bush from last season looks dead, it had started to open early. The same thing happened to two others last spring. All the spirea, about a dozen of them, are late.

New blooms: pachysandra, spicebush, pussy willow.


The special exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Selected Impressionist works from the PMA.....







The Munich Philharmonic at NJPAC before the appearance of Conductor Valery Gergiev and Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.