Tag: Autumn
-
Boathouse Restructuring
Today we turn the calendar back 16 years to Rosslyn’s boathouse restructuring. Some eighteen months or so into our rehabilitation project we had already sailed past our most generous timeline for completion. And the end was far from near. In fact, the finish line continued to retreat the more we advanced upon it. And, as…
-
Snack Attack
Hungry? Jonesing for noshes and nibbles? What?! Back to insipid blog prompts, I’m afraid. Today’s Bloganuary challenge isn’t horrible-horrible, but it certainly isn’t very inspiring. So, please forgive my snack attack post. What snack would you eat right now? Honestly, it seems to me that coming up with a months’ worth of inspirational, open-ended, push-you-out-of-your-comfort-zone,…
-
Play Daily
From our first fanciful forays — pipe dreaming and what-iffing — Rosslyn represented for Susan and for me an opportunity to play more. Or so we imagined back in 2005 and 2006 as we slowly talked each other into a monumental life change. Although fantasy and reality haven’t overlapped exactly the way we conceived, most…
-
Gray Day
What a persistent stretch of rainy gray days. It seems to me that February or March of this year marked a transition from *typical* North Country winter to rain-dominant weather. Then a rainy spring followed by a rainy summer. When autumn arrived, everyone was in agreement that the rain was behind us. Certainly September and…
-
Persimmoning
As autumn and winter braid themselves into a textured tapestry of yesterdays and tomorrows, persimmoning is upon us in all its nectary extravagance. Hint of honey. Scent of cinnamon. Bliss. I began my morning with the tender caress and sweet kiss of an hachiya persimmon. These photographs tell the story. But the backstory, that’s better…
-
Flashing Flashback
Weather reminds us that autumn will inevitably yield to winter. Frost. Flurries. Cooold nights… Probably soon-ish, at least for short intervals. And yet the threat of colder, wetter, even snowier and icier days ahead is 100% less concerning than it was a year ago. We’d only just begun our foray into Rosslyn’s icehouse rehabilitation. And…
-
Apple Adage
Let us turn our attention today to an important and timely inquiry: does an apple a day keep the doctor away? This apple adage is especially important at a time of year when Rosslyn’s orchard pumps up pomological generosity to the extreme. It’s pretty tempting to grab a crispy fruit from the tree of knowledge…
-
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…
-
After Rowing, Retrieving
After rowing, retrieving. A perfect pairing in the eyes of Carley, our Labrador retriever. Fall is upon us, but that’s no disincentive to man and beast from enjoying the still warmish waters of Lake Champlain. I find it challenging to capture in prose or images, but this autumn atmosphere and rhythm lend themselves to the…
-
Ready
Autumn is a season of reaping what we have sown, but also of metamorphosis and recycling. A bittersweet segment of the cycle. Endings. Beginnings. Harvest. Compost. Ready or not, the reality is each day upon us. While riding this morning, a moment of clarity briefly abbreviated my bike time. I braked, stopped, jotted down most…
-
Sculling Into Autumn
Susan and I celebrated summer’s end by sculling into autumn on Saturday morning. Sculling. September 23, 2023. Summers end. Slightly alliterative autumn. The beginning of a new chapter. Crisper. More colorful. Susan, Carley, and I uncovered the dory and rowed out onto placid waters to better observe the beginning of fall foliage and to honor…
-
Undocking 2023
Were back at that bittersweet bookend to summer: undocking. And it’s in especially poignant threshold this year. We pulled the docks, boatlift, and both powerboats on Friday, September 22, 2023. The last day of summer, literally and metaphorically. At Rosslyn we… use the term [undocking] to describe the annual autumn removal of docks (and boat…