Garden blooms and ridding rodents

The Norland Apple tree is blooming and the Thunderchild crab is starting to bloom.  I also see some blossoms on the Ohio Buckeye.  The Smokey Saskatoons are in bloom, but the Thiessen looks in bad shape.  I wonder if it was gnawed at by the voles.  I dispatched two today - one with the lawnmower and a second with a water hose.  They've been digging around all over the place.  No more neighborhood cats to control the buggers.

Kovacevich's Philips Beethoven Recordings

I have wanted this for a long time and this set arrived on May 22.  It's now a bargain box from Decca - 6 CDs of Stephen Kovacevich's Beethoven recordings for Philips.  I already had the Emperor Concerto, the Diabelli Variations and the Bagatelles.  Many years ago, I heard this recording of the Beethoven First Piano Concerto from a Philips Sequenza LP I borrowed from the Calgary Public Library. That was from way back in high school.  I marvelled at how big Beethoven sounded compared to Mozart.  And, when the first movement ends, Kovacevich plays the longer and more technically demanding cadenza.  Last night, I listened to the First Piano Concerto and the Fourth (I have never heard this recording of it).  I've always loved Leon Fleisher's recording of the Fourth the most.  A magical recording from 1959 with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra.  Kovacevich plays the same cadenzas for the Fourth as Fleisher does in his recording.  The BBC Symphony under the late Sir Colin Davis accompanies with distinction.  The sonics are something else too. When I got the set on Thursday, I quickly listened to Opus 109-110.  The last three Beethoven piano sonatas get played regularly at our home.  I shall set these interpretations alongside Maurizio Pollini's (my favorite).

I prefaced my Beethoven 'concert' last night with Naida Cole's recording of Fauré's Ballade and Chabrier's Bourrée fantasque followed by Murray Perahia playing Brahms Intermezzo Opus 118, Nr 2.  Naida Cole is a Canadian pianist who is the youngest student to ever earn an ARCT from the Royal Conservatory.  She is now a doctor.  Murray Perahia hasn't made a new CD since the Brahms CD was released in 2011.  I should have gone to listen to him in Toronto when I was an undergrad!

Nothing gold can stay 2014 Edition

Other than summer, this is my favorite time of year.  I don't particularly like aspens or poplars, but it is at this time of year that Robert Frost's poem so aptly describes the fresh foliage of the aspens in the parkland of western Canada.  I don't have any sunflower seedlings sprouting this Victoria Day weekend.  Not much has grown for me and the trees in my yard are still budding.  Often, the apple blossoms are already out and my Ohio buckeye is starting to leaf.  Not this year though.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Last Thursday, my Earth Science 30 class went on a field trip to observe building stone in downtown Saskatoon.  Tyndall Stone is from the Ordovician (about 450 My). There is a lot of Tyndall Stone in Saskatoon and here is a crinoid fossil near the main entrance of the Delta Bessborough:

There are several great references about the fossils found in Tyndall Stone:

• Manitoba's Tyndall Stone
• Tyndall Stone:  Manitoba Rocks!
• GAC PDF reference
• Fossils of City Hall (Edmonton)