Tag: Rosslyn’s Carriage Barn
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Hammocking
A day-ender, after builders and painter have headed home, before sundown but feeling the first flush of a refreshing temperature drop, talking, debriefing the day, Carley stretched in the shady grass almost asleep, hammocking… For the third season in a row we’ve enjoyed group hammocking among the still adolescent stand of maple trees growing between…
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Icehouse Stairway Update
Spoiler Alert: the icehouse stairway is not 100% complete. Yet. But it will be. Soon. I hope! There’s still an itty-bitty electrical wrapup (finishing up the riser lighting installation), but the main hurdle — one that’s been delayed again and again since winter — is the banister. Handrails and balusters. Everything’s been fabricated for a…
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Re-Homing Stump-to-Lumber Ash & Elm
Today I’d like to touch upon a recurring theme: re-homing materials and items still potentially useful to others (if no longer to us). We’ve been fortunate over the years to pair Rosslyn’s storage capacity in the carriage barn and icehouse with local expertise — specifically sawyers with portable sawmills able to custom cut logs on…
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The Past Lives On
The past lives on in art and memory, but it is not static: it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards. — Margaret Drabble I return today to a recurring theme, a preoccupation perhaps, that wends its way through my Rosslyn ruminations and my collections of photographs and artifacts. While the past…
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Vernal Equinox: Barred Owl Sighting
Welcome to spring! It’s currently 43° at Rosslyn, on target to hit 46° shortly. Sun is out. Snow is melting. Bulbs are bursting. So many remarkable signs and suggestions that the vernal equinox may indeed have marked the transition from winter to spring (daffodils and daylilies perking up, an auspicious sunset cloud formation, a handsome…
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Searching for Poetry
Searching for poetry, questing for questions that need no answers to matter and guide and enrich. This might be my epitaph. Some day. But not yet. I hope. Today, the vernal equinox, I awoke at 4:00 AM, eager to start cooking a wild boar roast I had thawed. Actually it wasn’t the roast that caffeinated…
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Meditative March
Mornings offer me moments of introspection, mostly optimistic meditations catalyzed by the dawning of a new day. A fresh start. So much pent up potential swelling. And like morning, springtime fills me with enthusiasm for what is possible. A seasonal morning. And so I’m finding myself lately absorbed in this liminal zone of daily and…
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Carriage Barn Chiaroscuro
Night. Light. Nightlight. Summer light. Winter window. Carriage barn chiaroscuro. Contextualized. Fragments of a whole. Wholesome fragments… In abstract,fragmented. Contextlesschiaroscuro.Fenestrationdefenestrated. Disembodiednightlight beacon phare illuminated butdecontextualized.Dark of night.Light of day.Lightness of artilluminatinglofty levity…obscurity. Art of darkness. Chiaroscuro: Clear & Obscure These are images of the second story window in the west façade of the carriage barn…
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A Barnophile of Bygone Barns
Yesterday I meditated a minute on bygone barns. Ancient farm buildings. Tempered by time, tempted by gravity, and sowbacked beneath the burdens of generations, these rugged utility structures retain (and sometimes gain) a minimalist elegance long after design and construction and use fade into history. My meditation was meandering and inconclusive. In part this was…
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Upcycled Christmas Gifts
What wintery wonders shall I share with you today? How about a celebration (and showcase) of upcycled Christmas gifts dreamed into existence by three allstar members of our icehouse rehab team? Pam, Hroth, and Tony stopped Susan and me in our just-barely-post-winter-solstice tracks with an early Christmas gift (or three) that exemplify the apex of…
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Icehouse Rehab 10: East Elevation Gable Window
I mentioned recently that framing for the expansive gable window in the west elevation of Rosslyn’s icehouse was completed, and the change was monumental. Now we’re on hold, anticipating the big reveal in a few months when the new windows arrive and the sheathing can be trimmed. For now that facade is concealed behind a plane…
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Icehouse Rehab 9: Gable End Window in West Elevation
Bar none, the west elevation of Rosslyn’s icehouse is undergoing the most consequential transformation of all four facades. From clapboard, clapboard, clapboard (except for the second story access door) and minimalist-but-classic barn vernacular architecture, to a veritable wall of glass at ground level and a picturesque gable end window above, the metamorphosis is a sweeping reimagination…