This summer’s drought and the continued warm temperatures have delayed autumn’s arrival: Most trees are reluctant to release their leaves; the weekend’s rain reinvigorated the grass. It remains just cool enough to walk with a jacket at sunrise.

Last night marked the halfway point of an NYR Seminar led by Daniel Mendelsohn on his translation on The Odyssey. Fabulous — the seminar and the translation. Last week, I finished Edith Hall’s Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life in anticipation of a course I am taking through Roundtable by 92nd Street Y. Today I’m continuing to reacquaint myself with Joan Didion’s work for a course with the Library of America.

For my next lesson, I’m preparing the seventh of Marcel Moyse’s 24 Little Melodic Studies and its variations. Having worked through Exercise 4 of Taffanel and Gaubert, I am becoming acquainted with Michel Debost’s scale game. We’ve added the first of M.A. Reichert’s 7 Daily Exercises to my practice routine, and I continue to use Moyse’s On Sonority, Art, and Technique. My current solo piece is Germaine Tailleferre’s “Pastorale for Flute and Piano.”