Vivaldi Under the Stars

I tell you that Cleveland can do her summers right! For all our collective complaining about the weather around here, and oh do we complain, when it is nice it is really nice.

And one of the best things to do when the weather is nice is to go to Blossom Music Center.

I have to say that it is a great privilege to live in an area where we are able to partake of all sorts of cultural things like Indians games and Browns games and….

Hmmmm?

You don’t think those count as culture? OK fine, how about this place. This is Blossom Music Center and it is wonderful. Who wouldn’t want to spend an evening under the stars. Of course sometimes it rains….alot when you are there. It is a great place to spend an evening with friends.

Saturday night was Handel and Vivaldi. Well not them personally because that would be a tad on the messy side since they have been dead for a good long time. No the Cleveland Orchestra was playing Handel and Vivaldi, specifically Vivaldi’s Four Seasons which is just lovely.

It was just us an a few thousand of our closest friends. Believe me when I tell you that this wasn’t an overly big crowd. We were there on July 3rd and there were 15,000 people there. Yes, you read that correctly….15,000. There was not a bit of grass to be seen.

HHBL and I try to keep our Blossom footprint to a minimum (unless we are there with LookLeap and Mr. Techno) but let me tell you some people bring massive amounts of stuff. It is like they are moving their entire home….chairs, tables, candles, wine, CHINA, wagons. It takes them an hour just to set up.

These people didn’t have too much stuff. What this picture doesn’t convey is that the hillside is steep. And when you have people hauling major home furnishings with them you hope they  don’t get too much momentum going and run down granny at the bottom of the hill.

Awwwwww, aren’t they cute.

  For once I did not take pictures of all of our food. I will tell you that it involved Grandma Pringle’s potato salad, meatballs in BBQ sauce and home made Blueberry Crisp with whipped cream. Yum. And we ate most of it.

People come early to grab a good spot. They eat, they play games, they read. There are always groups of kids rolling down the hillside, playing frisbee or just running around screaming like a banshee. There always seems to be someone who is standing there, talking loudly into their cell phones…..the conversation usually is something like this…

Edna? Edna where are you? I am standing here over by the hill. You know, the hill over by the wine stand. Well I don’t see you. I am waving my hands in the air. Can you see me? Well I will stand here for a minute until you get here but it is getting crowded and I want to find a spot to sit and I need my glass of wine.

And the conversation, of which I can only hear one side, is conducted in an ever increasing decibel level.



There also might have been some knitting going on. Are you surprised at this? How long have you been hanging around here? I made great strides on “Nutkin” and finished the pair by the next day. They are washed and ready to wear……when the weather cools off a bit.

Wool socks aren’t all that wonderful when it is 95F. But I digress.

Some people were playing Ms. Pacman on their iphones………wocka wocka wocka wocka.
And then it was time for the concert……and I tried not to worry about the rather ominous clouds that were amassing off to the west.

There was thunder and lightening by the end of the evening but no rain, at least not on us.

But who cared about all that when there was HHBL and Vivaldi under the stars.

Cleveland summers are so excellent.