Home Again

I'm finally home after 5 days in New York. My son's recital was specatucular. He played some difficult music very well and it was well attended. On top of having his degree recital in the evening, he played in another recital in the afternoon. Not just playing in an ensemble, he played a solo, and a trio. That is up and beyond requirements. Then on Tuesday, he played in another program.
The drive to Rochester was horrible, we drove through snow from Cleveland to Erie PA. The drive back was great--nothing exciting at all.
Our trip to the Finger Lakes area went well. We drove around Lakes Keuka and Seneca. The wineries were interesting and we were educated. This is a very slow period for them, so they had plenty of time to pour wine. We tried some nice wines, but I don't think that I am much of a expert yet. We bought quite a few bottles, so many that we had to buy a wine rack--acutally modular wine racks that can be expanded.
I volunteered at the Botanic Garden today. I had a group of 6th grader from Racine WI. The program was Sansho En--the Japanese Island gardens. It is a good program, the kids look at the garden, then they make a zen dish garden with sand, rocks and gravel. They also make a scroll, and write a haiku. They seemed to enjoy the activities, they were very involved and didn't talk. I signed up for a couple of groups next week. Teaching at the Botanic Garden is a lot of fun--the kids like the lessons, and I can say goodby after 2 hours.
Tomorrow I am doing a class at the Botanic--setting up flower borders. It is a part of my Master Garden education requirement. This is a big change from what I have been doing since January.
A final word on Nichols--the testing is over and went well. We had to test 95% of the students--I thing that we had 99.9%--all the kids were tested except 4. The school has an enrollment of about 595. I just hope that they did well.