Over the last year, I’ve often relied on aerial photography to help me conceptualize icehouse rehab plans, visualize topographical integration, and plan landscape / hardscape layouts. Over the years I’ve relied upon bird’s eye view photography (thank you drone technology!) for many of Susan an my projects, so this isn’t something new. And yet, it’s a superpower that amazes me again and again. The photo in this post wasn’t even necessary for the most recent series that I shot of the icehouse courtyard. But I couldn’t resist the chance to check in on Rosslyn’s backyard (or at least my favorite part of the backyard!)
What do we see?
The barns. More precisely, Rosslyn’s carriage barn (larger, upper) and icehouse (smaller, lower) are the two structures on the left hand side of this photograph.
Orienting ourselves with the cardinal points, the bottom of the photo is roughly north. The area northwest of the icehouse, an environment still undergoing significant reinvention including installation of the stone pavers, is what I describe as the icehouse courtyard. Partially enclosed by the icehouse and carriage barn, this sunken terrace is framed on the west and north by stone walls repurposed from Rosslyn foundations, cisterns, and even a few borrowed blocks of Chazy and Trenton Limestone (aka Essex greystone) from Heather and Lee Maxey.
West (ie. right) of the icehouse courtyard are five long, and one short, rectangles. Those are the aluminum docks we removed from the waterfront a week ago. We anticipate this being their short term resting place, not part of a long term plan. But we’re hoping to preempt a springtime 2024 flood fiasco (caused by unusually high lake levels heading into the autumn) if Lake Champlain overflows her shrieking next May and/or June.
The large block in the middle of the photo, roughly in-line with the carriage barn, is our vegetable garden. This is our summer pantry!
And the geometric grid north of the garden? That’s Rosslyn’s organic orchard comprising 49 organic apple, pear, peach, persimmon, cherry, plum, and mulberry trees. So much fruit!
And those long rows between the garden and the orchard? A raspberry and blackberry bed, a blueberry bed, a strawberry bed, an asparagus bed, and an annual flower bed. Abundance!
While Rosslyn’s home and boathouse tend to attract a disproportionate amount of attention, the backyard bounty is at least as glorious. And a bird’s eye view offers a curiously satisfying perspective as we concurrently celebrate both the 2023 harvest and completion of the icehouse rehabilitation project.
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