List five things you do for fun.
Almost a year and a half into Redacting Rosslyn, I’ve taken a semi respite from the rhythm of old house journaling, not by interrupting my daily updates — those have continued albeit with a different flavor and focus from previous posts — but by handing over the steering wheel.
That’s right, 23 days ago I accepted the Bloganuary challenge (as one of my 2024 new year challenges) and committed to a month of posts prompted not by my own editorial schedule, but by the whims of an unknown blog whisperer.
It’s been an interesting shift. Some prompts are fun others frustrating. A few have actually inspired new perspectives on the meta story I’ve been pursuing for well over a decade. New topics. New twists. Other prompts have invited me to veer off course, diving into superfluous territory. In both cases, I’ve tried to restrain my plodding posts to the scope of our Rosslyn adventure.
Today’s post falls directly within the fun category. At the risk of getting carried away (only five fun things… are you kidding?!) and listing an entire encyclopedia of fun lifestyle rewards of living at Rosslyn, I will do my best to corral some of the funnest of the fun into five categories, emphasizing outgoing links to previous posts if you’re interested in pursuing any of these topics further. Enjoy.
Champlaining
Tip-top of our fun list is “Champlaining” which basically refers to anything and everything enjoyable related to Lake Champlain. Carley would place swimming at the top of this fun category. Susan and I would add powerboating, waterskiing, sailing, wakesurfing, rowing (aka “dorying“), windsurfing, pretty much all watersports, and just about any other version of “messing about in boats”. Even enjoying the occasional bonfire on the beach!
Our long ago lifestyle reboot from Midtown Manhattan to the Adirondack Coast was an intentional shift from urban living to lake living. And we’ve never looked back!
Gardening
Fun for me (though work to many) is the organic gardening we practice at Rosslyn. The mind conjures vine ripe tomatoes, but there’s so much more fun to gardening including composting, identifying anomalies (“Why are my cucumbers orange?”), and identifying synergies (friend or foe?). And there’s the wild freedom of foraging, the spring magic of Spargelzeit (asparagus time), French breakfast radishes, and sweet strawberries. As spring blends into summer, we enjoy artichokes, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, eggplant, peppers, and so much more.
During summer months our homegrown produce constitutes a large part of our diet. And ditto for the squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, woodchucks, deer, etc. We call it abundance gardening…
Bicycling
One of my favorite spring through autumn activities is bicycling. From the Adirondack Coast’s Champlain Valley and all the way to the High Peaks, our roadways are exceptional for cyclists. In addition to the exercise benefits, the sightseeing is superb. I pedal and stop to watch a hawk’s gyre, pedal and stop to listen to a babbling brook, pedal and stop to chat with a neighbor, pedal and stop to eat an apple hanging from a branch over the road,… And there’s hardly any traffic on most of our roads. When a vehicle does pass, it’s likely to be a friend of acquaintance up for a quick hello or at least a friendly smile. Sometimes a poem (like “Cycling So Early“) is born of these meandering rides.
Orcharding
And then there is holistic orcharding, as fun in the cultivating and pruning as in the harvesting and eating. And then joy of the spring blossoms tries each season to upstage the sweet fruit — peaches, persimmons, plums, pears, mulberries, apples, and, hopefully soon, cherries — and does. But only for a while. While the fruit are ripening, we use natural sprays (Neem oil and Kaolin clay) as well as Tanglefoot to ensure the healthiest harvest possible.
And I’ve overlooked two of the most fun parts of holistic orcharding at Rosslyn: spring pruning (and ocassionally grafting) as well as homegrown grapes. Maybe they should be subtitled as vineyarding?!
Snowsports
During the North country winter, a whole new batch of fun activities begin: there’s skating on ponds and (some years) on Lake Champlain, there’s skiing (cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, telemark skiing, alpine skiing), and there’s wildlife tracking in the snow. In winter we also have a chance to change the rhythm a little, to toast our toes by the fireplace, and experiment with new recipes for soup and slow-cook stews. Nothing better than a ski, skate, or snowshoe outing followed by green chile stew!
But Wait, There’s More
Five fun activities seems too few, but I’ll wrap this post up. Hopefully you’ve been able to explore a few of the links. If I had the time I’d be tempted to push a little further to another fun activity I might dub “Renew Anew” that could sum up Susan and my creative obsession with reimagining, reviving, rehabilitating, renovating, recycling, reusing, and repurposing. Fun right? And the joy we find in what we could call “Locavore Hospitality”, the rewarding challenge of entertaining with a heavy emphasis on garden-to-table and farm-to-table resources. But, maybe next time!
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