Tag: Amish

  • Old Year’s Day

    Old Year’s Day

    Did you know that another name for New Year’s Eve Day is Old Year’s Day? Not used widely, in my experience, but logical. Retrospective. Emphasis on the year expiring rather than the year arriving. Despite a personal proclivity for forward-looking and possibility, a year-end review offers merits too. This day’s, this year’s minutes are too…

  • Amish Adieu

    Amish Adieu

    I mentioned on Friday that our Amish gardeners have wrapped up for the season after six months of caretaking Rosslyn’s gardens, orchards, and grounds. Their cheerful demeanor and their diligent care will be missed, so I bid them a grateful Amish adieu until next spring. To our Amish friends with whom we would struggle to…

  • Teak Table Renewal

    Teak Table Renewal

    As a teenager, I spent my summers working at the Westport Marina, first as a dock boy, and later, managing a fleet of rental boats. My coming of age memories are intricately interwoven with my boating and boatyard memories. They overlap. They converge. A recurring narrative during the boating preseason was cleaning, brightening, and oiling…

  • Among the Amish

    Among the Amish

    In keeping with the modesty of our Amish neighbors, this morning I would like to offer an understated but respectful nod to the family who have been helping us maintain and nurture Rosslyn’s grounds over the past year. No personal portraits and no names. No website and no Instagram handle. But plenty of respect and…

  • Giebel Garden Flashback

    Giebel Garden Flashback

    I apologize in advance for bypassing several timely updates on the icehouse rehabilitation progress. Sorry. I promise that they are coming soon. But there’s something about springtime, about gardening, about the promise of colorful blooms and produce that I’m finding too tempting to resist. And so I share with you what I’ll call a “Giebel…

  • Transplant Soon?

    Transplant Soon?

    With the high tunnel prepped and heating up and a variety of organic veggie seedlings maturing, we just might be able to jumpstart garden planting by a month. Transplant Tomatoes Soon?​ (Photo: R.P. Murphy) We have been fortunate this year to have help getting our vegetable plant seedlings underway from the Amish family up the…

  • Amish Assistance

    Amish Assistance

    We’re grateful to our Amish community for assistance nurturing Rosslyn’s organic vegetable, fruit, and flower gardens; our holistic orchard and vineyard; and sixty acres of landscape. While there’s much to admire about the dedicated women who have planted and weeded, pruned and suckered, nurtured and harvested for us, I’m especially grateful for their petroleum-free, exhaust…