The Palms

Here's a bit of green as a nod to yesterday's festivities, although I'm mostly thinking about Sunday's Palm Sunday service at Church of the Improv, which included Arvo Pärt's beautiful Berlin Mass for choir and string orchestra. It's wonderful beyond words to hear sacred music written by a living composer. The staging – with violins (playing ethereal harmonics) placed to the left of the chancel, violas, 'cellos, and basses to the right, and choir on the chancel steps – emphasized the conversation between voice and instruments in ways at once reminiscent of Ives' Unanswered Question and Renaissance chant. [Sigh] What a way to start Holy Week.

Put in knitting terms, the music was not unlike mittens of Malabrigo Worsted – soft, smooth, and flowing...



... simple, yet richly textured. It all makes sense – Pärt is a minimalist composer from Estonia, land of mittens.



These modified Chevalier Mittens by Tikru have jumped in the mail with a few other goodies and are on their way to my Mitten Swap downstream pal. I've heard from my upstream pal – my mittens are also in transit. By some synchronicity, a cold front has settled roundabout Exit 151, so this is a good time for mittens!



While I'm thinking about palms, I saw these oddities at the Flower Show. They have 3D bottlebrush fronds rather than the more usual flat pinnate or palmate fronds. Alas, they weren't labeled and none of the experts there could identify them (a few even claimed they "hadn't noticed" them). Perhaps they're a Roystonea sport? I wonder what they are called.

Ed: I heart the Internet. They're foxtail palms, Wodyetia bifurcata, an Australian species well known to Aborigines, but not to botany until 1983. Hardy and easy-care, they're increasingly popular in landscaping, particularly in Florida.