Meet the Flute Nymph
My Story
From the first moment I picked up a flute and held it in my hands nearly 5 decades ago, I've been in love with its beauty and the sweet and sensuous sounds that flow from this enchanting silver tube. I learned the basics as a child, studied seriously with a wonderful teacher in my teens, and then sadly kind of ignored it for many years while I pursued other things. I picked it up again over 20 years ago and found it to be very forgiving about the lost time. I played in a community college orchestra for many years in Tucson, AZ, and a piano, flute and cello trio that was just beginning to develop.
In early 2020, the pandemic shut down all the music groups. I was not a fan of the new way of working and socializing online. And there were some attempts to play music with others on line, but it was not the same as being with real people. I stopped playing again. Then out of frustration for the lack of social interaction and music in my life, I picked up my old friend the flute. And I discovered in my sheet music files that I had accumulated a lot of music with pre-recorded backing tracks for fluteover the years. Therein opened up a new way of performing as flute alone with pre-recorded backing tracks of all kinds of musical styles.
After months of working to get my chops back, acquiring sound equipment and developing my playlists, I am ready to party. And I’d love to share my music and love of this beautiful instrument with you at your special event.
Emily and Her Flute
The Story of my Roses
When my husband Linas and I bought our house in St. David, AZ many years ago, we also acquired several beautiful old rose plants that the former owners had cultivated for many years. I knew next to nothing about roses, but over the years learned how to care for them. They are very forgiving plants I discovered after my amateur attempts at trimming them back and forgetting to water or overwatering.
We have a lot of heat in Southeastern Arizona from April to October. Roses love heat, but they also must have a tremendous amount of water and that can be a challenge to keep up with the watering. I had read somewhere that a rose bud will re-root itself if you cut it from the bush at just the right time and plant in the ground under a glass jar and keep it wet for several weeks. I had admired a friend’s orange climbing roses near her house and decided to test my green thumb. I picked a day and took with me in my car sharp clippers and a cup of water. I chose a bud and made sure to clip the stem below at least 5 leaves and immediately placed it in the cup of water. You only have a few seconds to do this before the stem closes itself up. At home, I tucked the stem in the ground and placed a large glass jar over it and watered it every day. I was about to give up on this project after the bud had dried up and fallen off and it looked like nothing but a stick in the ground. But at about 6 weeks from when I planted the bud, I noticed a tiny green shoot growing up out of the stem. Success! I named her the ”American Kiri Rose” after my friend who’s house I had taken the cutting from.
Fast forward several years and my husband, Linas and I were vacationing in Santa Fe, New Mexico during the summer. We admired the roses growing in a courtyard near where we were staying and decided we wanted more roses to plant around our newly constructed pergola at our home in St. David. One night after dinner with friends we made our way to that courtyard armed with clippers and a cup of water. Leaning into the bush with Linas holding onto my waist so I wouldn’t fall, I clipped off two buds and quickly placed them in the cup of water. Back at our hotel room, we placed them in two small pots of soil we had brought along for this purpose, watered them well and placed a jar over the top like a terrarium.
Back home in St. David we placed the pots outside and watered them every day and waited. After almost 6 weeks we saw nothing happening under the jars. I was about to give up on the project, but Linas kept it up. At the end of 7 weeks, one of the buds rewarded us with a little green shoot. Sadly the other one did not make it. I have tried to find out what this rose is called in all the listings roses that I could find. Nothing I’ve seen matches the coloring of this rose. It starts out as a yellow bud with faint traces of orange and pink on the tips of the petals. In full bloom it will turn almost complete orange and pink. It really is stunning. We call it the “Stolen Rose of Santa Fe”.
My Roses
