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?
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.
First Peaches, 2021 (Source: Geo Davis)
First Peaches Haiku
Summer’s first peaches, sunshine soaked and siren sweet, seduce all senses.
— Geo Davis
First Peach, 2021 (Source: Geo Davis)
Peach Plenitude
Growing up in the Adirondacks’ Champlain Valley, we grew fruit trees. Apples, pears, quince. But never peaches. I honestly think it was considered foolhardy in those days. Perhaps conditions pre/post climate change have shifted enough or the varietals have become hardy enough that we can account for the difference in perspective this way. Or maybe it was just unfamiliarity.
First Peaches, 2021 (Source: Geo Davis)
For this reason, I’m abundantly grateful for our stone fruit harvests in general and our peaches in particular. It’s almost as if we’re cheating nature! And my tendency to romance the first peaches of the season is rooted in this enduring awe. We actually raised peaches! Almost too good to be true. Perhaps this peach plenitude will eventually become familiar enough that we’ll take it for granted. But it’s hard to imagine. Such a delicate ambrosial fruit prospering in our northern climes. Truly a bonanza!
First Peach, 2021 (Source: Geo Davis)
If you’re new to my blathering blog, welcome. And you might be curious what sort of peaches we’re growing. Our proximity to Lake Champlain creates a microclimate that favors us when it comes to stone fruit and other marginal crops for our northern growing zone. On the other hand our soil, especially west of the carriage barn where the orchard is located, has an extremely high clay content. This is not ideal for growing peaches. They do not favor wet feet.
That said, we’ve been fortunate growing Reliance Peach (2 trees) and Contender Peach (2 trees). I’d welcome a recommendation from growers who think we’d be wise to add another winter-hardy variety that responds well to holistic orcharding.
Poppy poems! At last I’m bundling a batch of verse celebrating my favorite blooms. Poppies. Papaveraceae. Coquelicots… Most of these poppy poems started out as Instagram posts inspired, at least in part, by daily snapshots of poppies blooming in Rosslyn’s gardens. For this reason I’ll include links at the end of the poem if you’re interested in seeing the original posts. Just click the link and a new window will open with the poem as it originally appeared with accompanying image(s).
Haiku Poppy Poems
Almost ephemeral brevity, stark minimalism, and — at best — a tingly eureka moment overlap haiku’s distinctive hallmark. Delicate. Vigorous. As unlikely a juxtaposition as poppies. Exuding a fragility and sparseness, but remarkably robust and resilient, the poppy is the haiku of flowers. And so I initiate this slowly evolving post with a collection of haiku poppy poems.
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Pink-Tinged Poppy (Source: @virtualdavis)
From velvety spokes a supernova outburst, ivory crushed silk. (@rosslynredux)
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Unfettered, unfazed by cloudburst or thunderclap, sensuous stalwart. (@rosslynredux)
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Papaver flashbacks bloom in frosted flowerbeds, daydream confections. (@rosslynredux)
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Come coquelicot, come crinkly crepe paper kin, come and laugh and lift. (@rosslynredux)
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Poppy blossoms pop into crepe paper fireworks and flamenco skirts. (@rosslynredux)
Longer Poppy Poems
While poppies and haikus strike me as cousins (or perhaps even as one and the same being at different stages of transmogrification), there are times when a poppy poem’s florescence exceeds the restraint of micropoetry. There are instances in which a poppy poem’s petals bloom into a lyrical sketch or rhapsody.
Amongst vegetables, fruits, herbs, and spices pop, pop, populate floral fireworks, flamenco skirts, and crepe’s crinkly kin, the coquelicots.
So sensuous, so beyond beguiling, so delicate yet robust, resilient, as exotic and mysterious as the whispering wind. (@rosslynredux)
Poppy Portraits (Visual Poetry!)
Sometimes a poem is crafted out of words, letters and spaces coalescing around a moment, an experience, a sentiment. Other times poetry is so visual that an image better conveys the poem. Please think of my “poppy portraits” as visual poems. Maybe you’ll agree that visual poems can sometimes eclipse the letter-tethered lot!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CgSOV5-g-WL/
She short video in the post above essays to distill the grace of a poppy in motion, buffeted by the breeze, petals fluttering, stem swaying. I’m not 100% pleased with this series of moving images, but it’s a start. I’m still learning the nuances of video, especially phone video. I’ll get better. Hopefully soon!
I’m as smitten with the poppy pods as the blooms. Once the papery petals yield to the wind or gravity, a handsome hull plump with poppy seeds remains. Ample. Memorial. Geometric.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B0GlMkNAh-1/
There’s something profoundly compelling in that image, don’t you think? A mystery unraveling. Or re-raveling. Wonder is summoned, and it answers eagerly.
Peaches This Year, August 2022 (Source: Geo Davis)
Glorious indeed it is to report that our peaches this year are the tastiest I’ve ever grown. Also the biggest, juiciest, sweetest, and IMHO the prettiest.
I’m chortling in my joy. Imagine, if you dare, the decadence of lifting a sun warmed peach, freshly plucked from the branch, up to your mouth, lips parting against the fuzzy flesh, teeth sinking effortlessly into the sweet meat, juice dribbling down your chin,…
It’s truly sensational! Peach perfection. Almost.
Sadly our perfect peaches this year belie a bittersweet backstory. But let’s micropoetry-pause a moment before sharing the slightly sadder side of this decadent moment.
Peaches This Year, August 2022 (Source: Geo Davis)
Peaches This Year: A Haiku
Few peaches this year but plump, nectar swollen with best flavor ever.
— Geo Davis
Bittersweet Backstory
That haiku actually tells the whole story, backstory and all. Our peaches this year are startlingly few after the bumper crops we’ve enjoyed over the last few years. It’s fair to say that 2020 and 2021 provided enough peaches to satisfy our most gluttonous appetites and to share with all who desired, from friends to wildlife. But 2022 has been a been a poignant recalibration.
We lost our two Reliance Peach trees this season. All of four peach trees budded on time this spring, and all four began to push out tiny little leaves. But then the two Reliance trees stalled. No apparent weather shock or fungus or predation. Just withering. And then suddenly the Reliance trees were dead. The other two trees, both Contender Peach variety, struggled as well. But they gradually overcame whatever was afflicting them (despite never really recovering 100%). Both Contender Peach trees experienced some die-back, and both set an unusually light load of fruit.
We will be replacing the dead Reliance trees and likely adding in a third new peach tree as well. Any suggestions? (Reliance vs. Contender Peach) I’m definitely open to recommendations for hardy, tasty peach tree recommendations that respond well to holistic orcharding (i.e. don’t rely on pesticide.) I’ll enjoy researching replacements, so that’s a silver lining, I suppose. But the best upside to the paucity of peaches this year has been is that the few we’ve enjoyed are quite miraculously the tastiest we’ve ever grown!
The male ruffed grouse in the photo above was documented on a Rosslyn wildlife camera about a year ago. Fancy fowl! And the two images below were recorded a few weeks ago.
Rosslyn’s backlands are fortunately flush with ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), a welcome reminder that wildlife gravitates — as if by some primal sense — to safe havens and sanctuaries. If you preserve it, they will come (or so our experience over the last 12+ years suggests.)
Ruffed Grouse (Rosslyn Wildlife Camera)
What is a Ruffed Grouse?
A brown or gray-brown, chicken-like bird with slight crest, fan-shaped, black-banded tail, barred flanks, and black ‘ruffs’ on sides of neck.
Habitat: Deciduous and mixed forests, especially those with scattered clearings and dense undergrowth; overgrown pastures.
Female gives soft hen-like clucks. In spring displaying male sits on a log and beats the air with his wings, creating a drumming sound that increases rapidly in tempo. (Source: Audubon)
Popular among hunters for their tender meat, the ruffed grouse in these images are safe in Rosslyn’s wildlife sanctuary. Although Susan is a vegetarian (a pescatarian, actually), I concede a robust appetite for wild game. That said, I’m not a hunter. And when we purchased first one, and then a second adjoining lots, our intention was to preserve and rewild, to invest in a healthy and resilient wildway buffering the already significant wildlife moving along Library Brook. With acreage expanded and John Davis’s wildlife stewardship guiding our rewilding efforts, native wildlife are returning and prospering.
If you’ve never heard a ruffed grouse drumming, you should definitely play the video below. It’s a mysterious rhythm I associate with late winter through early spring outings — cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and sometimes mindful, sometimes mindless meandering — through Rosslyn’s forests and meadows.
Carriage house horse stall door (Source: Geo Davis)
Horse Stall Haiku
Carriage house stall door, pockmarked, patinated, but hale, relates tenants past.
— Geo Davis
Wabi-sabi Horse Stall
Patina. Rust. Wear-and-tear. The horse stall door in the photograph above abounds in visible reminders of imperfection and impermanence. And yet beauty brims. The image, indeed the horse stall and the horse stall door themselves, exude warmth and comfort and reassurance. No frisky filly within. No stately stallion. Yet life has invested this space with memories and, as Donna Baribeau pointed out, “Authentic Beauty”. The bumps and bruises of horses and those who tend them are part of this carriage barn story. But for much of the last 200+ years that Rosslyn has presided over Merchant Row there were no carriages and no horses in this barn. The stables were repurposed for storing firewood, bicycles, lawn mowers, lumber, tools, children’s forts, and possibly briefly even as a bedroom (if firsthand accounts are accurate.) All of this, and more, has left marks and stories. All of this contributes to the wabi-sabi allure of this space (and this photograph of the space.)
In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” in nature… Characteristics of wabi-sabi aesthetics and principles include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and the appreciation of both natural objects and the forces of nature. (Source: Wikipedia)
Wabi-sabi is at the root of my attraction to time-worn buildings and artifacts. I consider aging utility buildings — barns, boathouses, ice houses, sugarshacks, etc. — to be at least as intriguing as old houses. More sometimes. So many relics, unselfconscious, candid. Less penchant for concealing, fewer makeovers, more concurrently present years and lives. Sometimes it’s the old, banged up subjects and objects that look the best. Thank goodness for that!
An endoskeleton for the soon-to-be loft shelving has begun to take shape.
Loft Shelving (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
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. One further step toward completion of my icehouse loft study.
Loft Shelving Haiku
Book bound words in a reading repository, icehouse loft shelving.
A little forward leaning, I suppose. Aspirational. Projecting, courtesy of my imagination, a few weeks forward…
A Jeroboam of gratitude to Peter Vaiciulis for agreeing to fabricate a custom elm and garapa threshold for the icehouse bathroom doorway. Conjoining two two dissimilar hardwoods is challenging enough, but I added an extra detail (or two) that you just might be able to spot in the photo below.
Peter Vaiciulis Fabricating Elm/Garapa Threshold (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
The strip of garapa (closer to Peter in the photo above) will form the interior side of the threshold, integrating the slate floor and antique door with the upcycled garapa paneling. The highly charactered elm — grown, harvested, aged, milled, and finished on Rosslyn’s property — will integrate with the ash and elm flooring in the main floor of the icehouse.
If you look closely you’ll see two bowties, one elm and the other garapa, sitting on the table next to the threshold. Peter is preparing to router and chisel these bowtie joints (butterfly joint) into the new threshold, resulting in a visual testament, indeed a subtle celebration of two dissimilar hardwoods united into a single door sill.
Sketch for Elm/Garapa Threshold (Photo: Geo Davis)
I gave Peter the quick sketch above several weeks ago with an explanation for what I envisioned. He instantly understood and accepted the challenge. His woodworking, joinery, and custom carpentry have proven indispensable not only in metamorphosing my ideas into reality, but in mentoring many members of the team.
Threshold & Bowties, Haiku
Crossing a threshold with the hammer and chisel, hardwood joinery.
— Geo Davis
Chiseling the Threshold
In the video snippet below a hammer and chisel begin to reveal the location for one of the soon-to-be embedded bowties.
In the snapshot above, Peter is trimming the top off one of two Greek revival columns deconstructed and salvaged back in 2006 when we rehabilitated Rosslyn’s dining room. Although our vision was to repurpose these bold design elements, to upcycle them some way, somehow, it wasn’t until undertaking the icehouse rehab (after postponing it indefinitely 14 or 15 years ago) that this capricious concept presented itself: use them in the icehouse!
Why, you might well ask, would we need two imposing columns inside the diminutive icehouse? While the question is reasonable, perhaps *need* is not the most appropriate evaluation. After all, adaptive reuse of a utility building originally constructed to fulfill a highly specific (and outdated) function obviously doesn’t *need* handsome embellishments for structural support. And yet the opportunity to re-integrate these historic Rosslyn elements into an otherwise utilitarian barn has presented a whimsical challenge that at some level echoes the unlikely marriage of work space and recreation hub we’re imagining into existence with this newest rehab project.
And soon enough, you’ll be able to witness the capricious way in which this pair of columns (and an understated entablature) not only help support the loft where I’ll be composing these daily dispatches in coming months, but also define and frame a spatial transition from the more intimate entrance and coffee bar into the loftier main room of this small building.
Offcuts from Re-tuning Columns (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Those geometric discs above are actually offcuts from Peter’s column re-tuning. while it’s easy enough for me to conjure these quirky concepts, and similarly viable for Tiho to translate my ideas into drawings, it is left to the alchemy of Peter and other finish carpenters to ultimately morph busily s and plans into reality. Thank you, Peter!
Tuning, Haikus
Re-tuning columns salvaged from a dining room, once deconstructed.
Sometimes a few fingers full of words best communicate a notion nebulous enough to wiggle free of prosaic paragraphs. And other times image, sound, motion speak sounder than words. So I conclude with two haikus, the more familiar variety above, and a quirky mashup below. Enjoy.
Call it a 184-day streak. Or call it dogged determination. Either way I have 181 days to go until I reach my goal. And with each new post, each small victory, I am growing more and more confident that I will accomplish my mission of 365 posts, one complete year of daily updates beginning on August 1, 2022 and concluding on July 31, 2023.
So how to commemorate this midpoint milestone? With 6 months down and 6 months to go, it feels momentous enough to pause and praise my good fortune. But should this benchmark be acknowledged with a celebratory salute? A solemn ceremony? A toast, my first spirited sip after 31 days of teetotaling? (Yesterday marked the conclusion of my 7th or 8th, maybe even my 9th “dry January”.) Or perhaps a decadent dessert after a sugar free month? (For some sadomasochistic reason I’ve decided in recent years to add a sugar fast to alcohol abstention during the month of January, a timely recovery after the excesses of Thanksgiving-through-New Years…) A new month (ie. rabbit-rabbit) ritual transcending the delicious dinner I shared with Jim and Mark two nights ago at Juniper?
Slow Cooked Whole Rabbit: cumin, blood orange and smoked paprika glazed, corn tortillas, chimichurri, salsa fresca, refried beans (Source: Juniper at Hotel Vermont)
Maybe a romantic romp with my bride who suggested, upon retrieving me from the airport yesterday, that we celebrate a belated anniversary to compensate for the one we missed this past autumn when she was unwell. 17 years of marriage and 21 years together. I’m incredulous even as I type these numbers. Neither seems remotely possible. But my 50th birthday seemed similarly inaccurate this past spring, and I’m obliged to accept it.
Or how about we honor the 200th anniversary of Rosslyn’s front façade, ostensibly completed in 1823? (Apparently 3/5 of the building — the two window portion to the north of the entrance, as well as the entrance itself — was completed in 1820. The remaining 2/5, including the two windows to the south of the entrance and comprising the dining room downstairs, a guest bedroom and Susan’s study on the second floor, and another guest bedroom on the third floor, was most likely finished three years later in 1823, fulfilling the the architectural promise of this classic Federal home with Georgian and Greek Revival elements.
An auspicious confluence of milestones and anniversaries. I’m choosing to interpret this is a good omen even as I nevertheless acknowledge that I’ve meandered from my original mark, hoisting the flag at my halfway point, mid-journey in my post-a-day quest. I recall an earlier waypoint in this quest, an update I published on October 10, 2022 when I was still just shy of halfway to where I am today.
Yesterday marked ten weeks of old house journaling. Every. Single. Day. Two months and ten days back at the helm of this wayward, meandering, sometimes unruly experiment I call Rosslyn Redux. I emphasize the daily component of this benchmark because it’s been an important part of the goal I committed to at the end of July. (Source: Old House Journaling)
Then as now my emphasis on everyday journaling remains a top priority.
Over the last few years, Susan and I have scrutinized our hopes and expectations with Rosslyn. We have reevaluated our plans as they originally were in 2006 when we embarked on this adventure and as those plans evolved during the decade and a half since. It’s been an extended period of introspection, evaluating our current wants and needs, endeavoring to align our future expectations and goals with respect to one another and with respect to Rosslyn, and challenging one another to brainstorm beyond the present.
There’s no question but that our impromptu quarantine at Rosslyn during the spring and summer of 2021 catalyzed some of this soul-searching. But so too have the many life changes in recent years. Our gradual shift toward Santa Fe as our base and Essex as our getaway rather than the other way around. The loss of Susan’s mother. My parents’ retirement near us in Santa Fe. Our nephews and nieces growing up and expanding their orbits far beyond Rosslyn. A perennially postponed but driving desire to collaborate on a smaller, efficient, creative lakeside home of a different DNA altogether, an unrepressable will to imagine into existence the sort of slow cooked (albeit shapeshifting) and highly experimental homestead we originally envisioned in 2003-5 when we first began to explore our Adirondack Coast homecoming. And there is that hiccup in our 2006 original timeline, our 2-4 year vision for homing at Rosslyn until we’d managed to reboot and reground, until we were ready for our next adventure. Those naive expectations were eclipsed — willingly and joyfully — within the first year or two.
So what does this have to do with my daily Rosslyn updates?
Everything.
In committing to this daily practice last summer I was acknowledging that I had some serious work to do. In order for us to constructively sort through out collective vision for the future, to determine whether we’re too fond of Rosslyn to proceed with plans for designing and building the lakeside retreat we’ve conjured over the years, to honestly assess our willingness and our readiness to hand this sanctuary over to another family, both Susan and I are undertaking the sort of “deep work” that will hopefully enable us to make some decisions. I’m talking about 100% honest, prolonged consideration. Rosslyn has quite literally been a part of our family, and not just our nuclear family. Can we untangle her? Are we willing to let her go? Can we joyfully pass the privilege on to new custodians? Or are we not yet ready?
For me this daily practice, digging deep into sixteen and a half years of living and loving Rosslyn, is my time and place to work through these questions. To sort it all out. To find peace and confidence in my convictions. And six months in, I believe that I’m on the right path. Not all the time. There have certainly been some tangles and tangents that got away from me before I realized what was happening and reined them in. But the constant conversation — *internal* as I study, reflect, and compose these installments as well as *external* as I share these updates and then interact with many of you — is reinvigorating and reawakening Rosslyn from her comfortable slumber (and me from mine!)
So this midpoint milestone is a profoundly significant benchmark for me personally. It’s the tangible representation of my germinating confidence and clarity. It’s the measurable mean between a conflicted outlook and the conviction I’m hoping to discover over the next six months. In a real sense, it’s a halfway point toward the sort of rehabilitation that we’ve been undertaking with Rosslyn’s buildings and grounds since 2006, only in this case the journey is profoundly personal. Instead of historic architectural rehabilitation, it is restoration of my innermost wonder, my romantic dreams, and my idealistic hopes. With passion reawakened and a map forward becoming more apparent each day, I’m tempted to see this benchmark as the sort of celebration enjoyed upon finally reaching a base camp, a lofty peak viewable in the distance foreshadows the ambitious ascent ahead but also offers a majestic affirmation of the reachability and proximity of the summit. Today marks just such a halfway point, an opportunity to appreciate the accomplishments so far, and an incentive to forge ahead.
I often refer to Rosslyn as a homestead, but I’m aware that might mislead some of you. No livestock. That’s probably the biggest deviation from most self proclaimed homesteads. No chickens. No pigs, sheep, or goats. No milk cow. No 160 acre land grant (though we’ve slowly grown Rosslyn’s acreage to more than a third of that historic sum.)
I’ve long longed for ducks. Hatchlings, then ducklings, then juvenile ducks, then mature plump ducks waddling around gobbling grubs and beetles and vegetable garden pests. Susan’s been a staunch bulwark against this homestead addition citing coyotes and hawks and an inadequately envisioned long term plan. Perhaps one day, some day. For now I celebrate wild ducks (“Common Goldeneye Ducks”) and safeguard the mallards (“Make Way for Ducklings” and “Mallard Jacuzzi”).
But ducks or no ducks, our homestead is not about livestock. There’s abundant wildlife, and our vegetable gardens and orchard provide plenty to eat for our family and friends. Throw in farm shares with Full and By Farm, plenty of supplementary victuals from Hub on the Hill, and nourishing ourselves offers bountiful satisfaction.
At Rosslyn, homesteading is less about producing everything that we eat and drink, and more about living as responsible stewards in a property presently and historically endowed with sufficient grounds and outbuildings for homesteading while honoring the homesteading tradition in as many ways as practical for us. I’ll revisit this idea soon, endeavoring to articulate more concisely our personal vision of Rosslyn as a homestead. For now I’ll shift to a few homestead haikus that might better — for their ample vantage despite minimalist format — illuminate what I’m trying to convey.
Homestead Highlights
Bookended between asparagus and apples: skinny-dips, bonfires.
Brookside Dissonance
While ambling brookside, celestial cacophony, a murder of crows.
Apropos Tomatoes
Green Zebras, Black Krims, early cherry tomatoes,… December daydreams.
Now about those ducklings… I might bring up the idea again this spring. Wish me luck!
Carley, Contemplating 33% Ahead (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
This is my 243rd Rosslyn update in daily succession. It completes an 8-month streak of daily old house journaling, the 2/3 mark in my quest to post every day for one year. I marked an earlier milestone — six months in and six months to go — with a summary of the aspirations guiding these posts.
With four months to go, I’d say this vision is still accurate, but the “mercurial transition / transformation we’re currently navigating” has received short shrift. The most psychologically probing (and the most elusive) of the subjects I’ve been exploring, it nevertheless gets sidestepped, dodged, abbreviated, and postponed.
And so I’m hoping to recalibrate in the weeks ahead, offering more perspective on our current state(s) of liminality. Dig deeper. Increase transparency. Invite you into the considerations and conundrums that we’re weighing. Big decisions on the horizon, and sometimes complex, sometimes conflicting feelings and ideas. Time for an open book…
