Autumn glory!

Saturday
A bit of a slow start this morning, waking up a bit late, then a phone call from Laura. It was a beautiful day, so we felt it would be a good day to work in the yard, cutting the grass, and doing a first round of raking leaves. Roger started cutting the grass at the front, while I got started on the heaviest section of fallen leaves, under the tree shown in my blip - actually our neighbour’s tree, but I reckon almost as many leaves fall in our yard as his! I’m sort of in two minds about clearing them, as they look a picture especially in the sun, a beautiful golden/red carpet on the ground, but then again, it looks neater when they’re cleared and I know Roger didn’t want them sitting on the grass. Of course, it’s only a temporary measure at this stage, since as you can see ther’s still plenty more to come down! Having got many of the leaves up, I got the rest up with the lawn mower. It kept me busy till mid afternoon, when I needed to go in and shower and fix an early dinner, as we were going out to a Cincinnati Symphony concert at Music Hall in the evening, and we were going to the pre-concert talk by the assistant conductor about the pieces on the program, starting at 7 pm. He does a really good job of introducing the pieces, illustrating his talk with various musical illustrations and excerpts.The program was entitled Russian masterpieces, and opened with Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bald Mountain, but in the composer’s original version, rather than the version most people are familiar with, the extensively revised version by Rimsky Korsokov. The program continued with Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1 and Shostakovich Symphony no 15, his final one. It was a guest conductor, the Finnish Hannu Lintu, and the Russian-born pianist Yevgeny Sudbin. A great concert, and almost sold-out.