Outbuildings, September 22, 2020 (Source: Geo Davis)
Autumn equinox is upon us again. Better than daylight savings time, right? Equal day and equal night. A perfect easterly sunrise and a perfect westerly sunset.
So many thresholds. August-to-September. Labor Day. First frost. First hard frost. Autumn equinox. Halloween. Daylight savings time. Thanksgiving…
Autumn is a season of thresholds. And among the many metaphorical doorsills and gateways, tomorrow seems especially significant since it’s a *real*, transition, like first frost, not an invented human centric ritual. A celestial no less!
September Twangs, September 23, 2019, (Source: Geo Davis)
September Twangs Haiku
Early morning light in mid-late, late September twangs like a banjo.
Three years and two days ago, September 23, 2019, autumn light leapt the visual audio barrier shortly after sunrise. The moment, really a medley of moments, still resonates today. Cooling hues and crisper textures tickle nostalgia for fall foliage past, the sentimental tug of mornings, no, illuminations past, hollowed out, taught, ready to be plucked into song.
Lyric longing. Morning luminescence. The icehouse dormant just beyond the basswood tree so recently. Now awakening. Coming to life just as autumn twangs, summer exists, winter rehearses.
Falling Forward…
A month from now, as autumn achieve’s its most dramatic, most colorful climax, childish charm inevitably gives way to the inevitable arrival of winter. In “Autumn Vibes”, the exuberance and optimism that twangs in the haiku above still linger but are already fading, resolving into the sweep of seasonality. Seasons come. Seasons go…
Autumn Aeration: Tony Foster preparing Rosslyn’s lawns for a healthy, holistic 2023 growing season (Source: R.P. Murphy)
If perfection were possible, then Rosslyn’s lawns would be dethatched and perforated deep into the soil every spring and every autumn to ensure healthy circulation of water, nutrients, and air. Needless to say, most years (every year?!?!) perfection eludes us. But, in keeping with our holistic approach to gardening, orcharding, and landscaping, we’ve come to rely upon at least once yearly (autumn aeration is preferable when we only have time for once-a-year) to ensure robust lawns. Experience has shown us that a healthy diet of organic fertilizer, zero pesticide, and aeration nurtures not only an attractive ground cover, but a resilient heterogenous sod that rebounds quickly after drought, etc.
Before continuing, a quick thought on why I favor autumn aeration over spring aeration, all things being equal. September and especially October offer the perfect balance of still-warm soil, ensuring efficient coring (spring can be muddy, gumming up the aerator) and cool temperatures slowing the growth of the grass as it approaches winter dormancy. It’s always better to prune, trim, and aerate with a minimum of impact to the plants, so the closer to dormancy, the better.
Tony Foster aerating Rosslyn’s lawns to ensure root-deep circulation of water, nutrients, and air during the coming year (Source: R.P. Murphy)
The photographs in this post show the indispensable Tony Foster, jack of all trades (master of all that requires physical exertion), patiently aerating. Shortly he will follow up with organic fall fertilizer and grass over-seeding. These bedfellows will slumber together over the long winter months, and by springtime they’ll be ready to fortify the lawn for another season of dog and human activity.
Tony has also aerated the lawns for us up the lake at our ADK Oasis vacation rental properties, so his perspective is informed when he explains the benefits of autumn aeration.
“It’s very loving, very caring for life. It gives air to the roots. And water. We need these things to live.” — Tony Foster
If only I’d been so succinct! Tony is spot on. Autumn aeration (and spring aeration, when we have the luxury of time) provides to our heterogeneous mix of grasses what it needs to thrive.
It takes about 3 hours to aerate a lawn depending on acreage. It’s simple. It involves punching holes into the ground sending oxygen and water to the roots. There are professional size aerateors to cover more ground. Similar to mowing a lawn, Aerating lawns relieves packed soil and allows air water and essential nutrients to reach grass roots. Almost Any lawn can benefit from this process given the low water table in the area causing lawns and gardens to grow poorly.
In our area early fall and spring are some of the best times of year to do this. Aerating can be tough to do in dry soil, so you are best to aerate when the soil is damp or a few days after it rains.
The equipment can be rented if you would like to do your own lawn from several lawn and garden stores or you can hire someone proficient in the process.
You want to stay away from roots or stumps because it can damage the machine. — Tony Foster
Autumn Aeration: Tony Foster preparing lawns for a healthy 2023 growing season (Source: R.P. Murphy)
Autumn Aeration for a Tennis Court?
Back on May 8, 2012 I posted a thinly fictionalized account of aerating the lawn, and I focused on a specific area of Rosslyn’s yard. Adjacent to the icehouse now being rehabilitated, once upon a time there was a clay tennis court. This area has long since returned to grass, but it’s still recognizable despite the fact that we’ve removed almost all vestigial indications (actually one steel net post remains as a sort of memorial… for now.) The perfectly level lawn and the outline of a tennis court were until recently notably if you wandered uphill as Tony is doing in the photo above. We’ve used this area over the years as a perfect volleyball and croquet court.
In that post we decided not to aerate the old tennis court area of the lawn.
“You don’t want me to run that thing on the tennis court, do ya?” he asked, referring to the lawn aerator we had rented…
[…]
“Good question, Wes. I didn’t think about that.”
[…]
“I was just thinking about the clay, you know?”
“You’re probably right. You don’t want to get bogged down in clay. Let’s skip the tennis court and focus on whatever else remains around the carriage barn and back around the gardens.” (Source: Rifle & Eggs)
In recent years I’ve recently second guessed that decision to forgo aerating the tennis court. After all, the clay is especially compacted and it drains poorly. What better candidate for aeration? And so we now include it in the acres of green that Tony patiently nurtures with autumn aeration, fertilizing, and overseeing.
Sugar maples ablaze between the orchard, gardens, and barns. What a season! Thanks, Pam, for capturing the autumn vibes from this fun vantage point in the nearest of Rosslyn’s meadows.
Although leaf peeping fiery fall foliage is inevitably and justifiably the cynosure this time of year, autumn vibes are aroused insubtler ways as well.
Ripe apples and pears in the orchard. Grapes trellised along the fence line. Blueberry bushes blushing crimson. Squirrels hustling acorns into their winter larders. Deer, emboldened, arcing easily over the fence to forage the gardens and orchard. Canada geese chattering south in protean Vs, settling onto the lake or into the fields for the night…
And this year we have a new ritual this year: re-covering the high tunnel after months of open air gardening. New scissor doors will make air circulation and cooling convenient in the coming weeks when daytime solar gain can still be significant. And with a hint of good fortune we may even extend our growing season later than in the past. New experiment. New territory. New optimism. And the always new but familiar autumn vibes of light frost followed by heavy frost — gentle warning followed by mortal barrage — whittle dramatically away at the vegetable garden’s viability. But with the high tunnel it just might look a bit different this year. We hope so.
Autumn Vibes Haiku
Early the ash turns, now maples and blueberries, succession of leaves. — Geo Davis
So recently I shared a still-ripening vision of autumn, similarly infused with lyric longing and luminescence, but less resigned, less resolved, perhaps less poignant. In “September Twangs” the micro poem wasn’t puerile, but it did sing with the intoxicating twang of exuberance and curiosity. The poem above, though a mere sliver of a season, nods to the inevitability of fall’s flourish fading. If the earlier haiku was a ginger, matinal perspective, a youthful perspective when autumn was just arriving, this October haiku is less twang and more the sound of fireworks fading. Perhaps a sonic boom echo-doppling into the forests and hills, perhaps a casdade of delicate cracklings decaying downward, twinkling sparks like celestial petals falling free of their blooms, bending toward gravity’s seductive beckon, then fluttering toward the placid lake’s watery mirror.
I’ve waxed whimsical on autumn before, and I’ve celebrated wonder-filled winter aplenty, but what of the blurry overlap between the two? Well, today I’d like to pause a moment betwixt both current seasons. Or astride the two, one foot in autumn and the other in winter. To borrow a morning metaphor from my breakfast, let’s pause for persimmons (as a way to grok — and hopefully embrace — our present seasonality.)
What?!?!
For the time being let’s sidestep the vexing fact that almost a dozen years into cultivating three persimmon trees in Rosslyn’s orchard we’ve never produced a single edible persimmon. Instead let’s look at persimmoning in terms of this morning’s sweet and sour, ripe and rotten persimmon episode.
Fuyu Persimmon, Sliced (Photo: Geo Davis)
I’ve been monitoring two pretty persimmons in the fruit bowl. I’ve been checking them daily for ripeness. Firm, firm, firm, less firm, slightly supple, soft, ready! Or so I thought this morning. I lifted the first much anticipated fruit in the lightless shadows of 5:00am. If felt perfect. I gathered the second and grabbed a small cutting board. I prefer to allow my mornings to illuminate naturally, calibrating by circadian rhythms holistically, so I generally avoid turning on the lights, even this time of year when 5:00am is still shoe polish dark. As I prepared to plunge a knife into the first persimmon, I detected something unsettling. The slick surface of the persimmon had a fuzzy spot about the size of a quarter. I turned on the light, low, but enough to show that I’d missed my moment with the persimmon. It was rotten. Moldy. Both. I’d literally been checking daily, often lifting both fruit from the bowl to examine them, but somehow this previously perfect fruit had suddenly become rotten. The second fruit showed not fuzzy rot spot. I carefully cut out the leafy stem, and sniffed the inside of the persimmon. Perfection. Somewhere between the consistency of gelatinous custard and viscous liquid, the persimmon was divine.
Fuyu Persimmon, Sliced (Photo: Geo Davis)
At this point seasoned persimmon aficionados are aware that I’ve been recounting an experience with hachiya persimmons (rather than fuyu persimmons), and the photos portray the latter. You are correct astute reader/persimmon connoisseur. And as my prologue likely betrays this morning’s experience was not well suited to photography. But it did remind me of a previous persimmon apropos of the actual topic I’d expected to explore in this post (but have so far mostly skirted.) And that memory, of a similar morning anticipating and then partially enjoying a persimmon is what lead me to these photographs. Why partially, I can hear you think. I partially enjoyed that persimmon, a fuyu persimmon, because the first few slices were ripe and delicious. But partway though the small fruit the sweet turned to astringent. And this puckering experience is a sure sign that the fruit is not yet fully ripe. Now, lest I’m misleading you again, I’m sorry to say, the photographs in this post are not of that persimmon either, though they are, in fact a fuyu persimmon. And, as a discerning eye might note, this photographed persimmon was delicious throughout.
So why all the persimmoning? The memories of this morning’s fruit and the part ripe, part unripe fruit a year or two ago, offer me a glimpse into the sort of autumn-into-winter transition we’re in right now. Almost ready, almost ready, over ready! And sometimes ripe and unripe at the same time. And, as I understand it, persimmons are often culturally associated with joy, good fortune, and longevity. I am hopeful that our present season change, still in limbo, but creeping closer and closer to that transition from autumning to wintering, from autumn vibes to winter vibes, might — like persimmons in the best of circumstances — may portent joy, goof fortune, and longevity for the rehabilitation projects underway in the icehouse, the boathouse, and our home.
1-1/2” ZIP System insulated panels reading for installation (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
Willing Winter Away a Little Longer
There’s something meditative about this time of year, a marginal meditation on interstices, on the span between autumn and winter, harvesting and larder hunting, biking and skiing, Thanksgiving and Christmas,… This liminal space is tied with winter-to-spring for most dramatic transitions in the circle of seasonality. And yet some years, this year, the switch is far from binary. There are moments when we appear to be on the crux, the hinging moment between the most abundant season and the leanest season. And other moments we’re currently in both concurrently. Ripe and rotten. Well, not rotten, really, but in terms of exterior carpentry, the going gets exponentially more challenging once snow arrives and temperatures plunge.
And so, for a while longer, we’re willing winter away. Tomorrow we’ll be installing the first round of spray foam insulation inside the icehouse, and we’ll *hopefully* begin installing the ZIP System paneling outside the icehouse. In other words, we’re getting really close to having the icehouse ready for winterier weather. The boathouse isn’t really winterizable, however, and temperate conditions are a huge boon as we forge ahead. At the risk of temping fate I’ll admit that it’s almost as if nature is holding her breath, stalling between autumn and winter. With luck, we’ll be able to take advantage of a little more borrowed time. But she can’t hold her breath forever, and we’re all aware of that…
This non-harvest, autumning haiku was born of Carley‘s lethargic mid-morning siesta by the fireplace. Contentment, canine style. It’s a tough life.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CljJSOFgoFV/
Wintering: unhaiku
Between blushing vegetation and gingerbread outbuildings, what name for this season?
Hustling pre-hibernation and melting flurries with breath, what post apple appellation? What pre skating designation?
I echo my own refrain again into the autumn interstices ringing with wintering song.
Willing Autumn Linger Longer
Like ripening persimmons, the transition from unripe to overripe happens whether we’re watching for it or not. Likewise fall vibes have been exiting gradually, and winter’s stark contrasts have been insinuating themselves into the autumnless voids. It’s inevitable that winter will arrive, and it will be glorious in its own right when it does. But here’s hoping fortune smiles upon us a little longer, that we can dwell in this construction-centric liminality for another week or three. Or right up until Christmas!
Septembering: grapes sweetening in the vineyard (Source: Geo Davis)
September 1 should logically be indistinguishable from August 31. But it’s not. Seasonality along the Adirondack Coast is irrefutable, and possibly no season-to-season transition more apparent than the one we’re now experiencing. “Septembering” is neither sly nor subtle. Hot and humid yesterday. Crisp and chilly today. There are nuances aplenty to anticipate and enjoy in the weeks ahead, but this moment is our reminder. Summer is in retreat. Autumn is advancing.
Septembering: grapes sweetening in the vineyard (Source: Geo Davis)
Septembering Haikus
There’s something ineffable about Septembering, but anyone who’s dwelled a spell in the North Country is familiar with this shift. Temperature and barometric shift are obviously part of it, but it’s also the changing light, daylight duration, and the abundant harvest. So much colorful harvest to tempt us. And that magical sweetening of fruit in the orchard and the vineyard. Best step aside and let sparse haiku convey what I’m stumbling over.
•:•
Seasonal surreal:
autumnal art, alchemy,
tart transformation.
— Geo Davis
•:•
Dusky zinnias,
harvest-ready to welcome
arriving houseguests.
— Geo Davis
This time of year we harvest fresh bouquets of garden-to-vase blooms to welcome our guests to ADK Oasis, our lakeside vacation rental. These colorful zinnias offered this afternoon’s new arrivals a cheerful invitation to unwind and revitalize! There’s something almost garish about zinnias, the decadence of color, the abundance of petals. They are the quintessential child’s illustration of a flower in my opinion. An explosion of colorful petals to balance the creeping autumn umber.
Septembering: grapes sweetening in the vineyard (Source: Geo Davis)
Grapevines too offer a sweet is slightly surreal portrait of seasonality. Days ago these bursting fruit were too tart too eat. I’ve been tasting. And puckering. But cool night catalyze the sugars as if awakening deep memories of what grapes might taste like. This morning I ate dozens of grapes. The perfect play of tart and sweet.
Septembering: grapes sweetening in the vineyard (Source: Geo Davis)
Seasonality might strike you as a strange menu for organizing a blog (and an even stranger way to navigate a narrative.) But in many respects it may well be the *only* useful way to structure a circular story that’s slim on plot, chronically achronological, and deeply immersed in the poetics of place.
Summer’s End
As if on cue, rain, frost, acrimonious wind summon summer’s end. — Geo Davis
I often romance sunrise and to a lesser degree, sunset, powerful circadian rhythm markers. There are likewise singularly potent seasonal markers along our Adirondack shore of Lake Champlain that punctuate notable transitions, from summer-to-autumn, for example. Some are relatively fluid such as hauling and winterizing the boats, removing the docks, and the colorful drama of our much anticipated fall foliage. Each of these examples are determined approximately by the calendar but more precisely by weather changes, prevailing temperatures, the scheduling particularities of our protean paths through life, etc. Less fluid examples of seasonality during this same period include harvesting ripe apples in the orchard, first hard frost of the autumn, and the mysteriously consistent Labor Day weekend meteorological shift. With respect to this last marker, most years we enjoy a lengthy “Indian summer”, but Labor Day — with startling predictability — plunges us into chilly, usually rainy weather as if on cue.
Seasonality: Winter (Source: Geo Davis)
What Is Seasonality?
The concept of seasonality is often cited in the context of business (i.e. financial market and sales forecasting) and healthcare (i.e. patient and virus fluctuations), but let’s consider the idea of seasonality in a less confined context. Let’s look at the root of the word, for starts. Season. I imagine we’re all pretty clear what we mean when referencing the annual rhythm of the seasons, the periodic ebb and flow of monthly rituals, and even their fluctuations in variations. Seasonality is those periodic patterns, variations that recur at predictable or semi predictable intervals year after year.
Seasonality: Spring (Source: Geo Davis)
Rosslyn Seasonality
Our mind easily conceives of seasonality’s periodic points, references for rhythm and repetition, but I think we might need to do a little more work to grok the idea of seasonally recurring events and transitions at Rosslyn, so let’s push a little further.
In keeping with my goal to curate and convey the narrative of our Rosslyn years I’m essaying to distill and disentangle, gather cohesive collections, often thematically tied, sometimes chronologically structured, and often enough coalescing around seasonality. Excuse the clunkiness. It’s a work in progress.
I have remarked elsewhere that Susan and I aspired to recalibrate our lives when we moved from Manhattan to Essex. It was a desire to embrace the art of a slow living. Part intentionality and part immersion in the here and now. We yearned to savor the unique gifts of each passing period of the year. It was a comprehensive paradigm shift away from our habitual efficiency and productivity and busyness, and it wasn’t an easy shift. It was a paradigm shift toward creativity not only in the most active sense of making, but also in the embrace of essentialism. A mindfulness focused on learning and appreciating and investing ourselves in the many microscopic moments of homeownership and rehabilitation and adaptation and outdoor living and gardening and sporting recreation and… living fully and intentionally all of the magnificent processes of our new existence. Yielding to seasonality meant rebooting our lives and our work from New York City to upstate New York, from the quintessential metropolitan hub to its veritable antithesis. It meant homemaking in the North Country, only 5+ hours away by car but a world away in terms of the rhythms and rituals, and even many of the values.
So, what sorts of seasonality, what specific rhythms help punctuate our Rosslyn lifestyle?
I will try to jumpstart your navigation through Rosslyn seasonality with prior posts that offer glimpses into precise instances of seasonality. I will continue to update this post as I revisit and revise older posts and as I compose new ones. If you’re inclined to seasonality as a way of organizing your own experiences, please bookmark this post and reference it in the future as a window into our Rosslyn adventure. (And if you find the idea too contrived or too procrustean for your taste, rest assured, there are a great many other ways for you to navigate this mosaic-memoir.)
Seasonality: Summer (Source: Geo Davis)
Try These Posts
Consider this an evolving outline of my posts explicitly or implicitly treating the topic of seasonality. I will revisit and update when helpful.
December 2014: “In recent years December has given us our first real blast of winter. A premature blast usually because early December snows have usually melted by Christmas…”
De-Icing the Duck Pond: “Let me start by saying that we don’t have a duck pond. We have a lake. Lake Champlain. And although it pains me slightly to say it, we also don’t have any ducks. Not personally, at least. Lake Champlain, on the other hand, has plenty of ducks. And when the lake freezes and the ducks run out of water to swim and eat, we offer them a small “duck pond” in front of Rosslyn boathouse to tide them over until spring.”
Winter Wonderland 2019: “Winter storm warnings wander across our radar often enough this time of year that we become a little meteorology skeptical. Not cynical. Just suspicious that promised snowstorms won’t quite measure up to the hype. Sort of a wait-and-see approach to meteorological forecasting…”
February Swim in Lake Champlain: “February swim, anyone? In Lake Champlain?!?! Griffin, our now almost nine year old Labrador Retriever, was thrilled to chase some throw-toys in the chilly lake today despite the fact that it’s February 19 and the water temperature is exactly three days above freezing… 35° of mid-winter swimming bliss!”
Spring Dance: Coyotes and White Tail Deer: “One trail cam. One location. Three months, give or take. Deer. Coyotes. And the transition from winter to spring in the Adirondacks’ Champlain Valley.”
Spring Meditation 2018: “Welcome to springtime in the Champlain Valley, a glorious but slightly schizophrenic transition — sun, rain, wind, hot, snow, sleet, etc. — when springtails make way for dandelions.”
Moist May 2017: “The Lake Champlain water level is ever-so-slowly dropping, but it’s premature to rule out the possibility of hitting (or even exceeding) flood stage. At present, there’s about a foot of clearance between the bottom of Rosslyn boathouse’s cantilevered deck and the glass-flat water surface. Windy, wavy days are another story altogether.”
Spring Soggies & Blooms: “The rain has stopped. At last! It’s a misty, moody morning, but the sun is coming out, and the rhododendrons are blooming. Life is good.”
First Peaches: “It’s but a month and a day after Independence Day and we’re eating our first peaches of the season. Eureka! So memorable a moment each summer when I savor the first bites of the first peaches of the season that I’ve begun to wonder if we might need to create a floating holiday. It’s hard to conceive of a better cause for celebration.”
Septembering: “September 1 should logically be indistinguishable from August 31. But it’s not. Seasonality along the Adirondack Coast is irrefutable, and possibly no season-to-season transition more apparent than the one we’re now experiencing. “Septembering” is neither sly nor subtle.”
Undocking: “Once upon a time undocking referred to a boat pulling away from a dock, a ship disembarking from a pier. At Rosslyn we also use the term to describe the annual autumn removal of docks (and boat lift) from Lake Champlain…”
Waterfront Winterization: “There comes a time each autumn when summer has faded and winter is whispering over the waves. Or when work, travel, something eclipses the languid stretch of fall boating and watersports. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later, and as inevitable and bittersweet as fall foliage, waterfront winterization is an annual ritual that braces us practically and emotionally for the North Country’s frosty November through February.”
Autumn Aura on the Adirondack Coast: “An autumn aura is descending upon the Adirondack Coast. Autumn colors, autumn lighting, autumn sounds (think southward-flying Canada Geese), autumn textures (think crisp leaves eddying and frosted grass underfoot), autumn smells, and autumn flavors…”
October Wind, Canada Geese and Essex DNA: “Despite the on-again-off-again Indian Summer that we’ve enjoyed this autumn, there have been some bracing days, many like the one captured in these photos. Picture perfect. Bluebird skies and sunshine. But crisp. And windy.”
On Wednesday afternoon my bride and I departed Essex and headed south on Interstate 87. Driving one of the Adirondack highway’s most handsome stretches always affords decadent views, but yesterday spoiled us with near peak Adirondack fall foliage.
It was breathtaking despite overcast conditions. The flat light desaturated autumn’s cacophonous palette, rendering a landscape more nuanced than the scenes typically conjured up on postcards, calendars and television cutaways. This was especially true in higher elevations of the High Peaks where damp leaves and wispy mist intensified my melancholic, almost nostalgic longing.
Leaf Peeping and Longing
But a longing for what? For High Peaks hiking and climbing and camping and fly fishing, perhaps. Or canoeing lazy Adirondack rivers, the crystal clear water at once reflecting fiery leaves on the surface and revealing those that have drifted down to the pebbled bottom, a sort of autumnal double vision. Or is the longing more abstract? An invitation to flip through dusty photo albums of autumns past, or an unanticipated, uninvited glimpse of mortality, the bittersweet knowledge that today’s bounty is tomorrow’s compost.
Adirondack Chair (Photo: jeffsmallwood)
It is all of this, I suspect. And more. Autumn is a welcome reprieve from heat and humidity and — for a few fleeting weeks — the weather and light reinvigorate me like an old country elixir that makes me happy and alert and energetic. After months of nursing seedlings, weeding vegetables, pruning fruit shrubs, trees and vines, fall is the long anticipated harvest. It is a time of abundance in so many tangible and intangible ways. Ever since my school days fall has marked the end of carefree summer adventures, but at the ripe old age of forty I have discovered that it also marks the beginning of some of the best sailing and windsurfing and waterskiing and cycling, luxuries I couldn’t enjoy when school blotted out all these activities. If Norman Rockwell had developed a theme park it would have looked and felt and smelled and tasted an awful lot like Adirondack autumn.
Removing ourselves from familiar environs inspires reflection, reminding us what is unique about the place we live. Wednesday’s visual banquet was no exception. Living in Essex, Lake Champlain influences many aspects of our life, autumn among them. Unlike the Adirondack High Peaks, Essex remains temperate longer in the fall. Our growing season is extended. In fact, the USDA recognized this fact during the last year and actually changed the hardiness zone for the Champlain Valley to Zone 5. Whether climate change or just the “lake effect” resulting from Lake Champlain’s immense, slow-to-cool thermal mass, Essex enjoys a unique microclimate.
Essex Leaf Peeping
For this reason, the leaf peeping in Essex trails the rest of the Adirondacks. The towering maple trees in front of Rosslyn remain vibrant green except for a slight blush on a few leaves. Wandering through the back meadows a couple of days ago I was hard pressed to identify any trees that were already flaunting their fall wardrobes.
Fall into Autumn (Photo: hsuyo)
In many respects a quintessential Adirondack village, leaf peeping in the High Peaks reminded me of yet another Essex exception. While most are quick to focus on Essex’s historic and architectural distinction, our climate is often overlooked as are the ways that nature and agriculture are affected by our often milder weather. The richness of life in Essex in no small part hinges upon the proximity to both.
Adirondacks vs. Adirondack Coast
I close this meandering reflection on Adirondack fall foliage with a forty five minute bicycle ride I enjoyed mid-day on Monday. I had pedaled away from Essex shortly after lunch, headed due west toward the Adirondack foothills. The weather in Essex was sunny and warm with a light breeze. There were clouds in the sky but not indication that I would encounter adverse weather conditions.
The Day the Gingko Leaves Fell (Photo: G.G. Davis, Jr.)
But I did. As I gained in altitude the temperature dropped steadily and the wind increased. The clouds thickened and I became more and more aware of the humidity. I was bicycling quickly, laboriously uphill, so the dropping temperatures were compensating for my overheating body. And then it began to rain. Not a downpour, but a steady, cold drizzle. Wind in my face. Colder still. I reached the furthest point in my loop and turned southward and then eventually eastward back toward Essex.
When I dropped in elevation and swapped woods for fields, the rain and wind subsided. The clouds thinned. Sunshine made it’s way through enough to restore vibrant autumn colors to the landscape. As I rode past Full and By Farm I realized that the temperature had also changed. The air was warming. Was I imagining it? I paid closer attention. By the time I started my final descent into Essex from the intersection of Middle Road and NYS Rt. 22 it was clear. The air was growing warmer the closer I got to Lake Champlain. In just over a dozen pedaled miles I had witnessed a range of at least 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
No wonder our Essex fall foliage is a week or two behind the High Peaks!
Pam captured the boisterous drama of fall foliage currently at Rosslyn. The Adirondack Coast tends to lag the High Peaks and other more central regions of the Adirondacks. Many of those cooler interior zones are predicting peak fall foliage this weekend. Others have already peaked. But at Rosslyn we’re still straddling the verdant afterglow of summer and the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows of mid autumn.
[Fall foliage] leaf peeping in Essex trails the rest of the Adirondacks. The towering maple trees in front of Rosslyn remain vibrant green except for a slight blush on a few leaves. (Source: Leaf Peeping in the High Peaks – Rosslyn Redux)
With Lake Champlain functioning as an immense heat sink, cooler temperatures are moderated, and fall foliage colors the canopy a little later.
Icehouse with Fall Foliage 2022 (Credit: Hroth Ottosen)
The perspective of Hroth’s icehouse rehab with fall foliage backdrop tied together two highlight of Rosslyn’s current transition. The gaping aperture’s in the icehouse, the ladder, and the blushing maple tree tell a story. If you listen, you may well discern the plot.
Barns with Fall Foliage 2022 (Credit: Hroth Ottosen)
Another perspective photographed reminds us that fall is here. Autumn vibes abound in this image made west of the barns, looking eat at the back of the carriage barn and the icehouse, still early in rehabilitation process.
Fall Foliage 2022 (Credit: Hroth Ottosen)
Walking further west, toward the setting sun, away from Rosslyn’s barns, Hroth took another photo combining the still blooming annuals beds with the maple trees. Layers ion layers of autumn colors…
I close with a hat tip to Pam and Hroth for capturing the spirit of this transitional time. With peak foliage soon upon us, and then the steady journey toward winter, progress on the icehouse rehab, boathouse gangway, and waterfront stairway will be increasingly important. We’re racing against the elements! (But there’s always time to slow down and appreciate the magnificent world of change around us.)
Sometimes it’s as if frames from two different films overlap. For a moment. Sometimes longer. Occasionally the overlapping images complement one another, but often the experience is jarring. Confusing. Unsettling.
Seasons bleed into one another playfully, testing our agility, our resilience. Far-flung geographies, domiciles, and life stages muddle, merge, and drift apart again. Our worlds intermingle. For a moment. Sometimes longer.
October Rain, Wordy
Tell me a story of prism pocks on pears. Sing me a song of raindrops on apples. Pen me a poem of flickering daylight, flirting with nightfall; of sleepless longing for toil-oiled muscles and limber limbed spring; of sauntering through my cherished orchard in sultry summer, still oblivious to the dreary drama of October rain.
October Rain, Visual
Sometimes poetry leans on language, word bricks and word mortar, to sculpt a song or a story. Sometimes vision is enough to free the singing underneath…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjYQvj3AtKY/
October Rain, Singalong
Another perspective on October Rain just might wiggle it’s way into your mental repeat. I happened upon the subtly hypnotic jingle by Robin Jackson, and now it’s continuous looping like a subconscious 8-track tape in my graying gray matter.
Mostly October is crisp and clear along the Adirondack Coast. Quintessential autumn. But exceptions and rules are made in mysterious ways…
With September and October skulking away and November slithering in, I’m dishing up a photographic retrospective, a parade of annotated images gathered “on the fly” over the last few months.
Timber Rattlesnake killed on Lakeshore Road in Essex, NY on August 22, 2012.
This first photo was actually taken in August, but I couldn’t resist including this unsettling image. I came across this freshly killed three foot long Adirondack timber rattlesnake while cycling along Lakeshore Road near Essex. The blood was fresh and the rattle had been cut off.
Although I want to believe this near-black Crotalus horridus was accidentally hit and killed by a car, it prompted a serpentless September rattlesnake safari, and catalyzed much conversation with friends about our local population of timber rattlesnakes. How can we protect them?
I’ll share rattlesnake news if/when relevant. For now I’ll move over to the autumn harvest. Given our hot, dry summer it was been a phenomenal year for most locally grown produce.
While we began flirting with frost most nights in September (earlier than the previous two years), tender vegetables like tomatoes were still coming out of our own garden and our local CSA, Full and By Farm, owned by Sara Kurak and James Graves.
These “ugly but delicious” heirloom tomatoes from Full and By Farm tempted me despite the fact that we’d been giving away and composting excess tomatoes since August. Too many, too fast. I’d been eating 2-3 tomatoes every day for lunch and dinner. Literally. I’m not exaggerating.
When I posted the picture of these yellowish orange tomatoes on Twitter and Facebook, several friends insisted that these tomatoes weren’t ugly. True. They were voluptuous and vibrant and even a quick glance discloses the explosion of flavor they pack.
But many of the heirloom varieties that we grow in our vegetable garden and the Full and By farmers grow are often referred to as “ugly” simply because they lack the uniformity of color and the blemish-free skin of the hybrid varieties usually sold in stores. In fact, the “uglier” the variety, the better they usually taste. One of my favorites, Black Krim is a perfect example. I wish I had posted a photo when they were still producing…
These hot, hot, hot peppers (early Adirondack autumn colors?) were part of our farm share pickup for several weeks.
I don’t tend to use many hot peppers in my cooking (and I grow several varieties in our own garden) so I haven’t been loading up on these, but I find them beautiful. Beautiful! I’m always amazed how naturally glossy and polished peppers and eggplant are. And the green/red mottling is exquisite.
If you scratch and sniff the photo, you just might understand why the farmers remind us again and again, “Those are hot!”
And what better complement to those exotic peppers than a not often witnessed artichoke blossom.
We grew Imperial Star Artichokes for the second time this summer. Last year we successfully propagated and matured a half dozen plants. But the result was only a few smallish artichokes. Lots of effort for negligible reward, but I was encouraged to try again. I’d never even known that we could successfully grow artichokes in the Adirondacks.
The discovery was made in the fall of 2010 while visiting the gardens of Château Ramezay in Montreal. I was astonished to see the thriving plants, and immediately began researching. It turned out that Imperial Star Artichokes are productively grown as annuals in Maine and other parts of the Northeast. We vowed to try to our luck.
This summer we had nine plants of which two never produced artichokes but the other seven each produced multiple artichokes. Several plants produced five to ten artichokes apiece. We’ve felt truly fortunate each time we’ve harvested artichokes for lunch or dinner. Can believe that artichokes are yet another highlight of Adirondack autumn?
In fact, so abundant were the artichokes during August and September that several began to bloom before we could harvest them. The photograph above nicely conveys the part-sea-anemone-part-fireworks blossom of an Imperial Star Artichoke. A favorite of our Rosslyn honeybees.
Adirondack autumn is also the perfect time for sailing on Lake Champlain. Although my bride and I have mostly concentrated on windsurfing in recent years, I often find myself gazing longingly at larger sailboats gliding gracefully across the water.
For most of my life I’ve dreamed of a swift sailing vessel large enough to live aboard and wander from port to port, slowly gunkholing my way around the world with occasional blue water crossings between continents. I even have a name for my ship. And her dinghy. But I’ll keep them under wraps until the time is right.
This handsome navy blue sloop was in the neighborhood for a few days, repeatedly cautching my eye because of its minimalist but handsome design. Elegant when drifting in a light breeze and even more so when scudding through whitecaps riding a stiff blow!
Although I’m aware that my critics may justifiably accuse me of bellybutton gazing each time I post a new image of Rosslyn’s boathouse, I simply can’t resist it. This architectural folly has enchanted me since childhood, and now that I have the opportunity (and responsibility) to care for her, I’m all the more smitten.
This photo was taken at dawn after a forceful windstorm (an unwelcome hand-me-down from Hurricane Isaac) that loosed one of the Adirondack chairs from the deck and dumped it into the shallow water of the beach. We were relieved to recover the chair because it was a handmade wedding gift from a close friend. Though one armrest was shattered, we will repair and repaint it this winter so that it will be ready to enjoy again next spring.
And, as if hurricanes weren’t enough, a short time later we were warned that a tornado threatened! A tornado? It does seem that extreme weather is becoming more and more common.
Only a couple of days before, Camp Dudley, a boys camp in Westport, NY where I spent a couple of memorable summers as a boy, was hit by an destructive windstorm that damaged roofs and snapped trees.
This moody black and white photo of the dockhouse was taken in the hours awaiting the tornado. Anxious hours.
Fortunately we were spared the worst of the tornado, but our good friends who own a home north of us near Valcour Island were not so lucky. They lost a towering old growth tree and their boat docks were tossed and somersaulted out into Lake Champlain. Fortunately nobody was hurt and the docks were able to be recovered.
In a similarly ominous vein, this photograph of Rosslyn’s waterfront not only conveys the foreboding of stormy weather but also of summer passing. Or at least that was my hope. You’ll have to be the judge.
The lighting and the shading suggest an antique photograph (thanks to a handy iPhone app which allows limitless technical control over the image elements) while the angle and unpopulated Adirondack chairs and beach add an eerie, abandoned feel. As if a seasonal camp or resort is about to be mothballed for the winter.
There’s irony in this, of course, because Rosslyn is our home. Once our summer guests depart and Essex village slows down, we experience a second wind. We are revitalized. But that story for another day…
Although we have several times hunkered down in anticipation of severe weather this fall, we’ve been been spared each time. And each time the skies have cleared to reveal blue skies and sunshine enough to warm our optimism. And even the occasional wild turkey feather. Check out this bumpy but fun video of twenty turkeys in Rosslyn orchard.
I’ve walked the property after these storms to survey fallen limbs and other damage. Each time I’ve been relieved with the minimal damage. We’ve lost many branches and leaves, but few trees. Perhaps this is due to some sort of cosmic payback for the damage to our fruit trees this spring when a powerful hailstorm destroyed an ancient crab apple and killed seven young fruit trees in our orchard.
Chief among my concerns when the winds howl (or the snowstorms dump, dump, dump) is our carriage barn which is overdue for a new roof.
When an old barn collapsed at Full and By Farm a couple of winters ago I started looking more critically at our historic carriage barn. Although it is in surprisingly good shape for its 100-200 years, the structural elements of the post and beam construction are under-built by modern standards. There are several areas where settling and sagging cause concern, and we’ve been moving forward with plans to secure the building and replace the roof.
If all goes as planned, construction will begin soon and we will be spared another anxious winter worrying that the snow load will overcome the proud old building. I will post updates if/when this project advances.
The perils and challenges of severe weather for homeowners with aging property are plenty, but there’s little pleasure in fretting. And there’s ample pleasure in celebrating the harvest, so I’d like to return to the topic of harvesting, preparing and preserving the vegetables of our labors.
But I’ve already droned on ad nauseum, so I’ll save further harvest updates for your next installment… Stay tuned for Adirondack Autumn 2012: Part II.
I’ll change gears from Rosslyn boathouse and waterfront snapshots to a few garden harvest memories.
We had enormous luck with melons this season despite a slow start. Actually, our luck was mixed. We grew about thirty medium sized cantaloups, but the squirrels (and raccoons?) devoured them as they ripened, successfully gobbling up every fruit before we could harvest it.
We had better luck with watermelons which either enticed the wild critters less or were better protected by virtue of their hard, thick rinds.
And a half dozen heirloom varieties of eggplant (eighteen plants) produced a bumper crop. Although we’ve grown eggplant for three or four years with decent luck, this summer was something else. The plants exploded up out of the drought cracked soil, quickly rising above my knees and in many cases reaching all the way to my waist.
We harvested literally hundreds of huge, glossy, delicious eggplant for over three months. We ate them every day. We gave them away. We even learned how to preserve them for mid-winer enjoyment.
I grilled and froze eggplant and blanched and froze tomatoes. I even cooked up (and froze) a sizable batch of Khoresht-e Bademjan, a Persian eggplant stew which we’ll devour this winter when the garden is three feet deep in snow!
The “skinny eggplant” photo was taken before slicing and baking them for the Khoresht-e Bademjan. In addition to several long, slender varieties, we grew several large purplish black varieties and pale purple striped varieties. (I’ve previously grown white eggplants, but skipped them this year.)
The eggplant were added to the tomato sauce which I stewed down from these yellow tomatoes, white wine, garlic and minced onion. The house smelled divine!
It was a challenging exercise in restraint to prepare Khoresht-e Bademjan to freeze and eat several months later without allowing “taste tests” to become “chow time”! But most of the eggplant stew is now frozen and ready for a snowy day.
During the same post-workshop burst of enthusiasm for food preservation I explored preparing and freezing stuffed peppers. Turns out they’re better eaten right away. So I picked a half dozen of the biggest sweet peppers; stuffed them with minced chopped/sauteed mushrooms, onions, garlic, piñon nuts and quinoa; and slow-baked them for a delicious dinner. Ah, the harvest…
Of course, Adirondack Autumn isn’t all stormy weather and culinary experimentation. The same chill which revitalizes the heat-stupored mind and sweetens the apples, pears and grapes chills the ankles.
That’s right, fall is marked by a return to socks.
For the first time in months the end of September found me sliding my paws into foot mittens each morning, a subtle reminder, day after day, that retrains the brain into cold weather survival mode after a summer of wild abandon. A small detail you say?
Perhaps.
For you. But not for me.
This Adirondack autumn has remained relatively mild and dry, though we did have a rainy stretch in October that caused Lake Champlain‘s water level to rise rapidly. The rising water posed some challenges for the stone retaining wall we’ve been rebuilding along the northern half of our waterfront, ongoing repairs to damage caused by the 2011 spring floods. We raced to complete the most critical stone and mortar work while the water was still low enough for the tractor to operate on the beach. Given the massive stones used to build the stone wall in the 1800s, a tractor loader and backhoe are a big help! Unfortunately the rapidly rising water reduced the time we could rely on the tractor, and the crew finished the work by hand, relying on levers and pulleys and winches instead of steel and hydraulics and diesel to perform the feats of brawn.
Next week I’ll feature a few snapshots that capture the natural lighting change that is part of Adirondack autumn.
Autumn Aeration: Tony Foster preparing Rosslyn’s lawns for a healthy, holistic 2023 growing season (Source: R.P. Murphy)
Autumn Aeration: Tony Foster preparing lawns for a healthy 2023 growing season (Source: R.P. Murphy)
