saturday

 at 8 am saturday morning chanda and i were walking downtown along the river.

 it took us thirty minutes which meant we had time to spare before the 9 am call. so we stopped at whole foods for tea and a few "kind" bars.

 at the theatre we went to our respective rooms. level four dancers were in a dressing room backstage, while the others were upstairs in one of the college's classrooms. it was a nice space with lots of windows and plenty of room for all the young girls (the boys were in a different dressing room backstage).

 i worked with andrea and doris . . 

 sewing squigglies onto black cumerbunds for the boys.

 meanwhile, my good friend elsa was given the task of trying to create "wings" for the six pegasus horses. here she's consulting rho about how to fold the tulle.

 taking the wings for approval with the head honcho . . 

 at this point elsa found out that her daughter was missing a ballet slipper, so she ran uptown to buy new shoes, while i ran home to take care of the dog. rho was left holding down the fort . . when i returned i found out that they ended up sewing the wings on in the dressing room between rehearsals.

on my way home i discovered a mobile amongst the trees:

so far i have not been able to find out what these are and who created them . . i'll keep you posted!

 when i returned to the theatre, i found out that elsa had made about twenty tulle bows in addition to sewing on the pegasus wings.

 three yards of tulle was used for each one! aren't they gorgeous!

 rho fixing her daughter's dress, and two little "calder" dancers doing the same.

 level three dancers . . 

 level one dancers with our friend isabella in the top row, second from the left.

 the show was early, at 6:30, so it was still light when leaving.

 it was nice not walking out into nighttime.

 dusk has always been a favorite time of day . . 

we enjoyed walking home as the sun set . . 

mr. frog on the way to ballet rehearsal

it's been a long day and i have more pics to post (including some beautiful ones from our walk along the river), but it'll have to wait. sleep has been in short supply and since jack is now asleep, i should be too. morgana has been putting her costume together for her solo, and rehearsing a duet with her friend deychen. chanda spent the entire day rehearsing for her ballet recital, and then dancing the first performance at 6:30 this evening (with a brief stint up to her acting class to rehearse a scene for their end of year performance next week). greg has been moving large IT structures in new jersey, and i think korrina is now babysitting.

visiting alex

 we visited my friend alex this morning. i just spent an hour trying to find the post from our last visit, but it's nowhere to be found.

 greg had the car today, so we were going to borrow my friend's car but it had a flat tire! we ended up riding out on the D train. it was a quick ride over the manhattan bridge.

 alex has a beautiful home and garden in sunset park. i love visiting here . . sitting out in her garden, drinking coffee and tea and eating strawberries and cream. and we always enjoy talking with alex.

 her aromatic roses which the bumblebees love.

 the church at the end of her block whose bells ring every hour during the day.

she says she has a switch that turns them off at night.

 alex has four boys who are still all in school, though i think owen has only one more year left.

 

 her upstairs tenant brought down her bulldog named bailey for us to meet. he's a hefty guy, weighing in at sixty-five pounds! and he was pretty old too . . ten years. that's old for a bulldog.

 getting ready to head back to the train . . m and c both had dance classes this afternoon.

 look at the stone work on the lintel over the door, and the decorations on the top of the roof. they really don't make houses like this anymore.

an ad we saw on the train . .

tour de force

 morgana had her guitar recital this evening. i asked her if she wanted me to video it and she said no. she felt that there would be too many mistakes. well . . there weren't! at least not that i could tell, or the audience. she received a lot of "bravos" and whistles. her teacher felt it went well also. he thought she reached another level with her playing. it was really nice to hear.

 i think she was pleased . . though she pretended not to be.

 with her teacher, nadav.

on the way home . . it was cold out! too cold for ice cream . . (which chanda tried to talk me into getting . . ).

observation day at joffrey

 it's ballet class observation week at chanda's ballet school. i observed yesterday, and today greg, korrina and morgana came.

a petite allegro combination: jete, temps leve, coupé, step ballonné, coupé, step ballonné, sissonne simple, assemblé, chassé en tournot, chassé en tournot, step assemblé . . repeat on the other side.

working on the landing of her tour jetes.

the grand allegro combination: step step tour jeté (three times), relevé balance, tombé, pas de bourrée, glissade grand jeté, glissade grand jeté, step, step into third arabesque

getting ready for the jump combination . . 

small jump combination (three changements and two eschappes)


 reverance . .

pointe work: retiré fifth, retiré fifth, sur le coup-de-pied, fifth, pirouette and finish.

adagio . . 

afterwards, greg returned to work. he's in the process of a big IT equipment move and he's always at work or on the computer or on the phone. korrina returned to her apartment, and morgana and i and chanda came home to dinner.

memorial day garden visit

 we drove out to the new york botanical garden this morning . . 

after first having a big breakfast of fruit, sausage and buckwheat pancakes in the thin traditional german style that my mom makes. i didn't even consider making a lunch . . like i've done in the past when visiting this particular garden. (the last time we visited with greg was in 2009 . . how could so many years go by so fast?) i guess i thought the breakfast would hold us over . . or i was hoping it would . . but chanda is still a growing girl and to keep her from turning into a bear in the latter part of the afternoon, we had to toss her a few treats . .

 all three riding in the back of the car . .

 walking through the newly opened and redesigned native plant garden . . 

 wild columbine

 sweetbay magnolia, magnolia virginiana, which grows in moist coastal areas from massachusetts to florida and texas. this is the tree that our complex's prior landscaper should have recommended to us for replacing the mulberries. right now we have a magnolia more suited to a southern climate in our courtyard that is slowly dying.

 the underside of the leaves are incredibly soft and fuzzy.

 along the rhododendron path . .

 "mint fresh" iris versicolor

 a male mallard sitting on the fountain ledge . . we first thought it was a statue.

 entering the native forest walk. the garden grounds were selected in either 1889 or 1890 primarily because there was still a vast section of native old-growth forest left untouched.

observing wild strawberries

this is the uprooted stump of a white oak that fell in a storm in 2004 at the age of 277 years old. in the beginning of the 17th century, nearly all of the historic woodland that covered new york city was cleared for farms and settlements. after having survived thousands of years, now only one percent of the woodland in the northeastern united states is considered old-growth.

 large outcroppings of rock are found in the forest. they say these were formed 500 million years ago and are primarily mica schist: a foliated and dark grey mix of white and black mica, feldspar, quartz and garnet. the grooves you see are called striae, and were formed when excavated rocks were dragged along bottom rocks as the ice sheets retreated.

 hanging out on the bridge overlooking the bronx river, the only fresh water river in the city. it runs for 23 miles from its source in northern westchester county to its outlet at the east river.

 the dam was built by a family in 1792 to help power a mill where tobacco was crushed to make snuff.

everyone has their special quiet place they like to . . paddle around in.

 at the lilac garden . .

 and the rose garden . . 

 the rose garden here at the new york botanical garden is a very hot place! we often escape the heat by climbing the hill and sitting on the benches and the large rock on the left.

or you can sit in the gazebo for a little bit . .

up on the hill . . 

 falling asleep  . . 

also up on the hill is the peony garden.

 chanda has a smile on her face, but it was fleeting . . it was lunch time . .

 relaxing with tea, coffee, pastries, soup and a nut bar at the garden cafe.

homeward bound. it went up to 86 degrees today, but there was a beautiful breeze off the river, so the apartment stayed cool.