Sooo close to arriving at Rosslyn, but these peony blooms (Paeonia lactiflora) have exploded into exuberant bloom before I made it back. A false start. Preterprecocious peonies, at least from my present perspective.
Fortunately Pam documented these peony season precursors. (Thanks, Pam!) Beautiful debutants, welcoming Rosslyn arrivals. Our arrival. Shortly. But, inevitably rain will arrive, as if on cue, once the peonies bloom…
Perhaps micropoetry might capture a petal or three. And offering it up to the universe just might invite a rain free reprieve?
Preterprecocious Peonies (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Bursting with color and perfume, peonies might seem an unlikely culinary accessory. But the roots and petals are, in fact, edible. Of course anybody who’s cultivated propones (preterprecocious or otherwise) would resist disinterring peony roots for eating. But the petals?
Two men on scaffold carpentering, high-fiving, enjoying the view.
Scaffold High
Much of the finish work in recent months has been high above terra firma (interior wall and ceiling paneling, exterior siding, window installation, etc.), so ladders and scaffolding have been omnipresent. Lots of climbing up and down, lifting up and down. Simple tasks become less simple, and complex tasks become more complex. Up, down, up, down,…
And yet the team has persevered. They’ve climbed, lifted, and maintained their upbeat demeanor. They’ve collaborated and they’ve celebrated. High five!
For such a nanoscopic space, it’s a little uncanny how much complex finish carpentry and how much cabinetry have been part of this final stretch in the icehouse rehab. Actually… it’s precisely *BECAUSE* of the nanoscopic proportions that we’ve emphasized builtins and detailed finish work. And degree-by-degree we’re measuring progress toward completion. Even the cabinetry in icehouse loft is beginning to take shape.
An endoskeleton for the soon-to-be loft shelving has begun to take shape. Shop-built carcasses fabricated by Bernie Liberty have been delivered and installation has begun. Lining the north and south knee walls, these reading repositories will soon be lined with bound words… (Source: Loft Shelving)
Cabinetry in Icehouse Loft (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
I accompanied my April 25, 2023 update with a haiku — a loft shelving haiku, of course, — brimming with bookish confidence. Bookshelf confidence, at least. I acknowledged my exuberance at the time.
A little forward leaning, I suppose. Aspirational. Projecting, courtesy of my imagination, a few weeks forward… (Source: Loft Shelving)
A few weeks forward?!?!
“Piece of pie,” the carpenter responded in January when we discussed the icehouse loft cabinetry. He estimated “a couple of weeks” to fabricate and install the cabinets. My optimistic update (referenced above) was posted three months later when some carcasses had been delivered, and the first units were installed. Hhhmmm… Almost two months after that the face frame is joining the ensemble. Hurrah!
Cabinetry in Icehouse Loft (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
I frequently remind Carley that anticipation is half the pleasure. She remains unconvinced, but lately I’ve been reminding myself that this isn’t just a patience mantra. There’s more than a kernel of truth in it. An aphoristic cousin to “distance makes the heart grow fonder”, perhaps?
However we account for it, I’m relieved and more than a little thrilled to see my loft cabinetry coming together. Since this space will be my study, the lofty locus of my productivity, I have a vested interest in the timely and reliable execution of this builtin storage. A tidy workspace is a productive workspace! Heck, I’m overflowing with aphorisms today. And even an autogamous poem…
Study & Studio Haiku
Lo lofty locus, penning’s, typing’s, doodling’s manufactory.
Speaking of anticipation, years of hope and expectation have fertilized the vision for my study-studio in the icehouse loft. A picture perfect panacea! And yet, I recognize the zealous overreach, understand that degrees of recalibration may be necessary. Soon.
Loft Cabinetry
With luck I’ll follow this post soon with a celebratory bookend to this project. Perhaps “a couple of weeks” will have extended into a couple of seasons, but I’ll be able to migrate my books and files and fountain pens and miscellaneous mementos into their new shelves and cabinets. I’ll be able to position my desk beneath the east side gable window and occupy the chair with a view for productive mornings in my loft. Ah, Elysium.
My mind meanders, doubling back on an exchange with Pam this past winter.
Geo: Builtins will combine open shelving (note dimension changes per our meeting) and cabinet doors (paint grade shaker style with flat panel and no panel molding) concealing deep cabinet storage. Please review plans and help me determine whether or not we can/should fabricate in-house or subcontract to a cabinetry shop. (Note: I’m hoping to evaluate whether or not our team is well suited to undertaking this mostly shop-work carpentry, and whether or not it is the most pragmatic use of our resources.
Pam: Builtins have been snapped out. I have a cabinet maker stopping in tomorrow to see the scope of work and discuss his availability.
Willing forward motion — cabinetry installation, final painting, hardware, and… migrating from the house to the icehouse — in the coming days.
After months of icehouse rehabilitation, this door is no longer needed. But it still has plenty of life left in it. Given Tony’s commitment to this project since day one, it feels especially appropriate that he’ll be able to re-home this ready-to-hang door. Architectural salvage with an individualized backstory!
Re-Homing & Reusing
Baked into the icehouse rehab (and sooo much of our +/-17 year love affair with Rosslyn) is the inclination to salvage and rehabilitate, to recycle and upcycle, to repurpose and reuse. Whether the old piano we discovered in the carriage barn or the stone cistern/cesspool that was disinterred during replanting of an evergreen hedge last summer, we’ve been keen to reimagine obsolete and abandoned artifacts in new, useful ways.
Do you remember this?
We’re hoping to “re-home” our AMT 626 John Deere “truckling”… While… a reliable workhorse since, well, since forever (1990-ish, maybe?!?!) it’s old enough that we’re not feeling like a sale is the right option. We’re less interested in trading it for your hard earned loot and more interested in finding the best next chapter for this handsome beast of burden. Who can offer the most idyllic retirement (gentle work, lots of love, and maybe a nice nickname?) for this decades’ old John Deere? (Source: Re-Homing John Deere AMT 626)
Here’s a quick attempt to explain one of the many inclinations for our reuse commitment.
So much of our good fortune as Rosslyn’s stewards has been inherited from generations before us. Responsible ownership, conscientious preservation, and magnanimous spirits account for the life we’ve enjoyed on this property. We endeavor to follow in that tradition… (Source: Re-Homing John Deere AMT 626)
In other words, Rosslyn has tutored us in the merits of conservation and preservation, rehabilitation and reinvention, generosity and sharing. That this temporary means to secure and insulate access during our icehouse rehab will now be re-employed year round at Tony’s home is an apt destiny for this door.
More Re-Homing Soon…
Please note that I will be announcing additional re-homing opportunities in the weeks and months ahead. Are you interested?
Another exciting, we’re-getting-close communiqué to share today: the glass shower enclosure in the icehouse bathroom has been installed. While these photographs may not do the shower justice (a little bit of perspective distortion, perhaps?), the progress is worth trumpeting because it represents one more notable stride toward completion.
The glass and polished nickel shower enclosure looks ample in the snapshot above. It’s not. The entire building is diminutive, and the bathroom is super compact. The shower? Even more so! But for now we’ll enjoy the exaggerated perspective, a little eye candy to balance the snug proportions of the *REAL* (ie. not distorted by the mysterious magic of digital photograph) glass shower enclosure.
The photo below provides greater verisimilitude, and it helps orient the pedestal sink adjacent to the shower, a sneak peek at the bathroom as it will appear once complete (if we can manage to photograph this small space without continuing to distort dimensions and proportions, a challenge when quarters are tight.
Speaking of glass and nickel, I requested that Superior Glass Company (who templated, fabricated, and installed the glass shower enclosure) match the shower enclosure’s 1/2” clear tempered glass and gently beveled edges with glass shelves that we’ll be floating inside the garapa niche. Here are the shelves, ready to install.
Glass Shelves for Niche (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
I’m still sourcing polished nickel pins (or similar shelf supports) albeit unfruitfully so far. Soon I’m hoping to locate minimalist hardware finished in polished nickel suitable to support these rather stout shelves. Proportion is important, and so far I’m only finding undersized pins…
While my poppy passion is no secret to Rosslyn Redux readers, I’m less vocal about my partiality to wild flora like trillium and Jack-in-the-Pulpit. One learns to protect these treasures!
But today I pause for an overt gawk at this exotic Jack-in-the-Pulpit, a sylvan surprise with almost impossibly green and purple stripes.
Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum sensu stricto or Arisaema triphyllum s.s.) is one of the most extravagant spring flourishes our woodlands offer. Coming across this beauty recalibrates, we’ll, just about everything. The day, the week, one’s mood, one’s wonder, one’s optimism. A gift of nature. A gift of springtime.
Beyond the beauty, there is mystery. A wondrous, semi sibylline wild neighbor. Let’s take look…
Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Jack-or-Jill-in-the-Pulpit
Let’s take a look at the reproductive realm.
The inflorescence can be male (with male flowers only), bisexual (with both male and female flowers), or female (with female flowers only). In a small plant, most if not all of the flowers are male. As the plant matures and grows larger, the spadix produces female flowers as well as male flowers. The transition from male to female continues until eventually the plant produces female flowers only. This is an example of dichogamy, a rare phenomenon in flowering plants. Due to this sex-change lifecycle, this species is sometimes called colloquialy as Jack or Jill in the pulpit or Jill-in-the-pulpit. (Source: Wikipedia, June 23, 2023)
Fascinating, right? Let’s look into “dichogamy” a little further.
Sequential hermaphroditism (called dichogamy in botany) is one of the two types of hermaphroditism, the other type being simultaneous hermaphroditism. It occurs when the organism’s sex changes at some point in its life. In particular, a sequential hermaphrodite produces eggs (female gametes) and sperm (male gametes) at different stages in life. Sequential hermaphroditism occurs in many fish, gastropods, and plants. Species that can undergo these changes do so as a normal event within their reproductive cycle, usually cued by either social structure or the achievement of a certain age or size. (Source: Wikipedia, June 23, 2023)
And you thought I was just showcasing an extravagant bloom! Sometimes nature amplifies our perspective, offering a fresh twist on ideas we consider in other aspects of life…
I’m thrilled to showcase the icehouse’s west facade with new double doors flanked with full-height side lites. What a transformation. With the west elevation doorway installed we’re approaching the point where reality resembles Tiho’s renderings.
Rendering for Icehouse Rehabilitation, West Elevation (Source: Tiho Dimitrov)
Remember that west elevation drawing Tiho created to help the team visualize where we were headed? The image below captures the same view, the partially fenestrated west facade, just prior to the day the west elevation doorway was installed.
Partially Fenestrated West Facade (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
I jumped the gun, announcing fenestration progress when we were still short of completion.
Aside from window and door trim, three out of four elevations — east (above), south, and north — are now exhibiting their close-to-final appearance. (Source: Fenestrated Facades)
One of the many workflow challenges we’ve navigated was delaying installation of the glass doors.
Only the west elevation (below) is still waiting on installation of the 1st floor double doors and flanking windows. And that’s on hold until flooring is complete. So, hopefully soon! (Source: Fenestrated Facades)
Once the double doors, flanked with windows, four glass apertures balancing the gable window above, are installed, this west-facing elevation will allow for a seamless interplay of interior and exterior living area. So long anticipated, these fenestrated facades are beginning to bridge the envisioned and the actual. (Source: Fenestrated Facades)
And here it is! West wall opening, doors being installed.
Installing West Elevation Doorway (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
With Peter overseeing, Matt (green shirt) and Supi (red shirt) secured and fine tuned the Marvin double door unit. In the photo below they appear to be celebrating their success. Actually, rather than a victory lap I think they’re troubleshooting to ensure the install was perfectly executed.
Installing West Elevation Doorway (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
And then came the glass slabs flanking the doors.
West Elevation Doorway (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Once trimmed, these four glass apertures will be mulled into a contiguous element that looks as handsome from without as within. Soon I promise to share the inside-out perspective!
More good news this morning: the icehouse coving is complete!
It looks so seamless, so simple now that the woodwork is joined, the discrete elements have coalesced, and the paint has dried. Integration. Cohesion. Hurrah!
Coving Complete (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Only a few months ago, this vision — more mirage than meaningful map forward — danced in my imagination. It was a problem to solve, actually a couple of problems, plus the possibility of an elegant if understated solution.
During my recent on-site meetings with the team I discussed a specific twist that needs resolving in order to move forward with coving construction (and tie-rod fabrication). There are ledgers along the north wall and south wall top plates that were installed in 2006 as part of our roof rebuild. All of the rafters land on these ledgers. The rebuilt roof is robust in part because of this interesting workaround, but it creates a 1-1/2” step near the top of the wall that introduces an impediment (or possibly a benefit) for coving construction. Basically, our construction plan (A402, detail 4) does not account for this plane discrepancy. I’m endeavoring to integrate the step structurally into the cove construction. Although this structural element creates an added challenge, I actually think that it might contribute to a pragmatic solution… [However, this] idea doesn’t (yet) integrate electrical, focusing just on structural and finish integration. (Source: Ciphering on Icehouse Coving)
The electrical uncertainty pertained to low voltage lighting that is being concealed above the north and south side coving, gently illuminating the vaulted ceiling and allowing for a shadow line above the coving. (See the coiled wire in the image below?) That installation comes next. Here’s hoping that the results match up with my hopes…
Coving Nearing Completion (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Pieces of the Puzzle
The snapshot directly above and the next one below, offer a glimpse into the carpentry process for fabricating the coving detail. Multiple constituent parts comprise this otherwise subtle, understated design element.
Like pieces of a three-dimensional puzzle finding their companions, the intricate borders, contours, and profiles fuse into a whole. With an ooold structure like this late 19th century icehouse, there’s another challenging. Few, if any, angles are true. Corners are infrequently 90°, walls bow and they’re rarely plumb. So scribing and fine-tuning are constant and critical. Measure, cut, fit, tune, refit, re-tune,…
Coving Nearing Completion (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
But, little by little, headway is made. And, as you can observe in the almost complete coving photo and the post-paint photo below, diverse puzzle pieces pull together and begin to merge. There’s a profoundly rewarding coalescence as heterogeneous components form a homogeneous ensemble. From pieces, emerge a whole.
Coving Nearing Completion (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Doubling Back…
Wait what?!?! How did we get here? What did I miss?
If you’re perplexed with my quasi communion-esque enthusiasm for carpentry-conjoining bits and pieces of wood into architectural poetry, I understand. I offer you my sincere condolences. My peculiar propensity to understand (and communicate) creative processes — and I’m speaking in sweeping, inclusive, and trade androgynous terms from gardening and landscaping to construction and cabinetry, writing and theatre to dance and song — in analogous and overlapping ways. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!
But let’s double back a beat or three in case the coving journey slipped past unexamined.
Structural integration for coving in the icehouse’s vaulted ceiling area is now complete… wrapping around the north, west, and south walls at the height where ceiling and the north/south walls meet… a new horizontal ledger has been installed and the “shelf” has been fastened underneath. (Source: Icehouse Coving Progress)
From unanticipated challenge to opportunity, from draftsman’s drawing to incongruous field conditions, a carpenter’s quiver need be equipped with *BOTH* skill and art. Fortunately our team is innovative and creative and persistent. Hurdles are chances to share ideas and collaborate on workarounds.
The next step will be to encase the 2x8s with trim (dimensional poplar) that will meet up with T&G nickel gap paneling on the ceiling and walls as shown above. Cove crown will be installed beneath the shelf, and an aluminum track will be installed in the corner of the shelf to secure LED strip lighting. (Source: Icehouse Coving Progress)
Now we’re ready for the strip lighting. Imagine the view below as it will appear once the cove on the right is gently backlit…
Coving Complete (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
With a flicker of fortune, I’ll be posting that update soon!
A couple of weeks ago I shared a “Flooring Sneak Peek” and four days ago I shared an update on the icehouse flooring focused on “Variable Width Floorboards”. Today I’m pleased to announce that the mixed species ash and elm flooring installation is complete. Eureka!
Many, many months into our homegrown, stump-to-floor journey, the first floor of the icehouse is complete.
You may recall that we decided to mix ash and elm for the icehouse flooring, showcasing a decade and a half worth of lumber that we had harvested, milled, seasoned, dimensioned, and finished on-site. (Source: Variable Width Floorboards)
And the result is simply sensational. Character-rich wood exhibiting a remarkable breadth and depth of color and pattern.
Note that these snapshots were taken shortly after installation was completed. Still ahead? Sanding and sealing. This still anticipated floor finishing will further enhance the natural grain and hues of the ash and elm.
For a change I’m actually at a loss for words. Such a slow, painstaking labor of love, from long ago felled timber to meticulously dimensioned and plained flooring… it’s been a quest!
Spring-into-summer is a celebratory parade of gastronomic gateways. Nettles, ramps, fiddleheads, asparagus, rhubarb,… So many seasonal ingredients and tastes. And now it’s radish time!
Ready for Radish Time? (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
These early French Breakfast Radishes are almost impossibly delicious. Crisp and spicy. Uniquely refreshing.
The French Breakfast Radish (Raphanus sativus) is [an] early summer classic — and perennial staple of Rosslyn’s vegetable garden — [that]… tends to be mild (less “spicy” than other standard radishes) if harvested and eaten early…(Source: French Breakfast Radish)
Ready for French Breakfast Radish time? (Illustration: Geo Davis)
Perhaps four years living in Paris account for my preference, but these early season benisons — as enticing to the eyes as to the tongue — beguile me year after year.
Radishes (my favorite are French Breakfast Radishes) celebrate precocious summer’s spicy return with vibrant, bye-bye-mud-season colors, a super satisfying crunch, and tastebud reviving explosions of peppery sweetness. (Source: Radishes and Radish Greens)
Such sweet springtime seduction. Love at first crunch. New and invigorating each year despite familiarity and anticipation.
And that’s just the red and white taproot. To be sure, the tuberous vegetable is what we envision when radishes are on the menu. But they’re only part of the radish time rewards.
Radishes aren’t just crunchy eye candy for crudités. Radishes are nutritious. Especially the radish greens! (Source: Radishes and Radish Greens)
That’s right. The lush greens you snatch to lift a ripe radish from the soil are a delight themselves.
As with standard radish varieties, the “radish greens” of the French Breakfast Radish can also be eaten. Washed and tossed into a saucepan of olive oil (or avocado oil), garlic, and onion, this wilted green is a delicious accompaniment…(Source: French Breakfast Radish)
Whether wilted alone or mixed with spinach and shredded Swiss chard, these nutrient rich greens will improve your plate. And radish greens sautéed then puréed with cream (or nondairy alternative such as Macadamia milk) make a delicate soup as pretty as it is piquant.
As we hurtle toward completion of the icehouse rehab, I catch myself in barn reflection. Again. Yes, I consider the icehouse a barn. And, yes, migrating my books and artifacts and works in progress from a bedroom-turned-office (aka study/studio) in our home into the almost renovated icehouse is enthusing me beyond reason. It’s also catalyzing reverie and rumination into my farm backstory. Let’s dig a little deeper?
The Farm in Cossayuna, New York (Painting: Louise Coldwell)
The painting above, made by my godmother, Louise Coldwell, has hung above my study/studio fireplace for the last 15 or so years. In this façade of the first home I remember, the two small windows at the top, right were my bedroom. Below my bedroom, the dining room. To the left of the entrance doorway, the living room. My parents bedroom was above the living room. I say, “the first time I remember”, but there were others. An apartment in Manhattan and another in Bronxville. Also, overlapping, a house in Glens Falls and another in Lake Placid. Itinerant years when my parents were still primarily living and working in New York City and then orchestrating a shift upstate. I’ll sit down with them to try and map out these years and lodgings. I muddle these memories in part to offset the fact that The Farm stands out for me. I’m not 100% certain why, but it is the first home the main impression on me, a home that still conjures poignant flashbacks.
Recently I’ve been sifting through memories and mementos of those few-but-formative years, and I’m coming to suspect that my association between barns — especially old, weathered, rural farm barns — and “home” (as well as “homing” and basically all matters related to “homeness”) is intrinsically rooted in my early childhood adventures at The Farm.
Omnipresent: OMC and The Farm (Photo: Geo Davis)
Note the painting, partially cropped, in the photograph above. For a decade and a half this is what I saw when sitting at my desk, if I turned away from Lake Champlain to look at the fireplace. And if you allow your eyes to drift down to the cluttered mantle above the fireplace, you’ll see a black-and-white photograph.
That’s me as a shaggy, bowl-cut youngster, with OMC, a family friend and neighbor when we were at The Farm. He was also my godfather and, in many respects, a surrogate grandfather. The initials stand for Old Man Coldwell, a nickname he used to sign the pottery he made (including the enormous bowl featured in this post: “Generosity of Friends: Lemons from Afar”).
Memories of The Farm and OMC overlap for me. Not always, but often. His presence and guidance, his physicality — apparent in this photograph — and his wonder-welling words. Our time together was guided by adventure. Riding an old tractor through a field to round up a cow that had gotten out. Riding an old tractor through a field to round up a cow that had gotten out. Walking to a distant meadow where he kept a rowboat and fishing rod ready on a pond bank. Squatting among strawberry bushes hunting for the largest, ripest fruit. Harvesting honey from a hive and eating it, thick and warm from a spoon. Massaging clay and squishing it through my fingers when he and my mother were potting…
At The Farm with OMC circa 1974-5
My parents’ friendship (and eventual falling out) with OMC remain intertwined with their memories of The Farm as well. I’ll inquire what if any memories they might share. Until then, I’ll loop back to the property itself.
My parents, living and working in New York City, had purchased an 1840s farmhouse on 85 acres in Greenwich, New York five months after getting married. I was born less than two years later. Although The Farm served primarily as a weekend getaway for the next five years, it dominates the geography of my earliest childhood. A stream of nostalgia gilded memories flow from this pastoral source: exploring the time-worn barns, absent livestock except for those conjured up by my energetic imagination and the swallows which darted in and out, building nests in the rafters, gliding like darts through dusty sunbeams; vegetable gardening with my mother; tending apple, pear and quince trees with my father; eating fresh rhubarb, strawberries and blackberries; discovering deer and raccoons and snakes and even a snapping turtle. (Source: The Farm)
Bucolic. Burnished, no doubt, by time’s spirited sentimentality.
I weave The Farm in Cossayuna (aka “The Farm“) into a conversation, a blog post, a social media update. Why? Not sure. Maybe the omnipresence of The Farm as a defining point of reference in my own life? (Source: Preservation by Neglect: The Farm in Cossayuna)
I’ve explored elsewhere the overlap between my lifelong fascination with barns (and barn vernacular) and my early memories at The Farm. The chicken or the egg? Which came first?
Woven into the earliest tapestries of my childhood are fond associations with barns. (Source: A Barnophile of Bygone Barns)
I wander my patchwork memory map and wonder, wandering, wondering, where is the margin mocked by tides and waves, the littoral boundary of fact and fiction, fluctuating with wind and moon? What was The Farm? And what have I imagined into it?
I inevitably distort history, omitting and abbreviating and emphasizing, distilling the vast landscape of data into vignettes. These accrete gradually, revealing the narrative design of my story. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)
Are these memories of The Farm in Cossayuna accurate? Reliable? Are they actually defining details in my life, reliable anchors tethering my current contemplation of homeness?
“Life is not what one lives, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” — Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living to Tell the Tale (Source: Remembering and Recounting)
This rings true to me. We are our story. Our stories. And The Farm, embedded inextricably into my attraction to Rosslyn, has provided a sort of scaffolding for many of my homing initiatives since about 2005.
As I bring this meandering meditation to a close, it’s worth noting that I’ve shared images of The Farm over the years. Always the farmhouse, never the barns. Peculiar that I don’t have any images of the barns. I’m almost certain that I took a few photographs when I visited within the last decade, but I haven’t managed to put my fingers on them. I will keep looking, but in the meantime, I’ll ask my parents if they might have an old photograph or some other representation of the outbuildings at The Farm.
High Tunnel Tomato Plants, Take One: Frost Damaged Tomato Plants, May 18, 2023 (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Sometimes, when I’m trying to explain the many merits of gardening, I describe the cultivation of plants as a quasi-religious force in my life. Sincerely. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but there’s much in the practice of planting and sowing, cultivating and composting, even weeding and pruning and grafting that underpins my worldview, informs my optimism, and provides a circular and self sustaining system of belief and practice. What constitutes a religion is a debate for another blog. But tossing this into the mix may help contextualize the significant ache I was veiling in my recent High Tunnel Hubris post.
I tried to remain matter-of-fact, sidestepping the debilitating discouragement that sidelined me for a day or two after a severe frost shocked dozens of the plants that I’d helped transplant.
High Tunnel Tomato Plants, Take Two: Suckering Back to Life? (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
So… when we jumpstarted our spring starts in the high tunnel, I was fueled with fervor and faith. We’d have tomatoes by the end of June!
But a severe frost reminded us that BLTs and gazpacho aren’t a matter of pipe dreaming alone. Yes, nature humbles.
High Tunnel Tomato Plants, Take Two: Suckering Back to Life? (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
No blame, except my own optimism. I understood the stakes. I understood the risks. And I understood the consequences. Although the perspective is pretty bleak, at this point, I’m tentatively hopeful that some of the tomatoes may recover. If the soil was warm enough, the roots may remain vital. If a sucker shoots in, we can cultivate it into a new plant. The prospect, of course, for tomatillos is less good. But I’m not prepared to give up yet. The possibility of new growth might yet eclipse the discouraging dieback we’re now witnessing. After all, I’m not aware of anyone who has ever died of optimism! (Source: High Tunnel Hubris)
And so I fell back on optimism. Pollyanna optimism. We left the cold-shocked tomato plants in the ground. And little by little *some* regrowth has occurred. A minority, but an inspiring minority of our zapped tomato plants have rebounded, sending up new growth as “suckers” that we’re endeavoring to cultivate into new stems, new productive tomato plants.
High Tunnel Tomato Plants, Take Two: Suckering Back to Life? (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
It’s still early, as you can see in today’s photographs. They may endure. They may thrive. They may produce a robust tomato crop. Or, they may not. But we’re tending them. Loving them. Believing in them. We’re fertilizing these resilient tomato plants with optimism. If fortune so chooses, we’ll have learned from our hubris *AND* we’ll be able to celebrate our wisening with the sweet tangy sacrament of Black Krim and Green Zebra tomatoes!
