Tag: Haiku
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Mileage May Vary
Slide into the wood and leather cabin of our hand-me-down 1949 Riley RMB, and you’ll be transported (despite the sad fact that this handsome saloon has not been driven in about four decades), transported to an earlier time when details, materials, and finishes mattered. A time when motoring was an appreciated privilege whether commuting to…
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Heart Rot Haiku
After the cloudburst, the lightning, the raging wind, a sunny morning. Calm. Calmer. Picture perfect, except for the debris. The damage. The shattered trunk of an immense old maple tree. An ancient maple —gnarled noble, hidden heart rot —hallowed, hollowed husk. Still absorbing the loss of this monumental maple. The second and last on our…
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Morning Dew
After weeks of rain, we’ve enjoyed two glorious August days. Summertime splendor all the more apparent for the contrast with two months of incessant drizzle-to-downpour conditions. Sunny. Bluebird skies. Hot. Light breeze. Lower humidity. And morning dew on the decks and lawn when I take Carley out in the morning and when I wander up…
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Jumbo Blackberry
This evening, walking to the house before dinner, my niece handed me a blackberry she’d picked in the garden. it was enormous. The biggest I’ve ever seen. And, without thinking, I popped the jumbo blackberry into my mouth. It exploded in flavor, like a fistful of normal sized blackberries, warmed by the sun. An explosion…
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Golden Hour Gaze
Dogs communicate much with their gestures, their looks, their gaze. Or so we, their doting owners, believe. Finding Carley curled in the setting sun this afternoon/evening, shoehorned into an unlikely window seat, a new favorite among many favorite napping spots, we paused a moment, each of us, as if exchanging a question. Cozy? Snack time?…
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Ceiling Fan Reveal
Aerial photography fascinates, in part, I think, because it’s slightly superhuman. An omniscient perspective, removed from the familiar, human scale world we inhabit. For a moment we enjoy an eye in the sky vantage that augments our reality. This ceiling fan haiku explores another perhaps tangentially related experience of wind — both natural wind and…
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Loft Shelving
An endoskeleton for the soon-to-be loft shelving has begun to take shape. Shop-built carcasses fabricated by Bernie Liberty have been delivered and installation has begun. Lining the north and south knee walls, these reading repositories will soon be lined with bound words. One further step toward completion of my icehouse loft study. Loft Shelving Haiku…
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Re-tuning Columns
Rosslyn Redux regulars will be familiar with this multimodal “singalong’s” refrain celebrating the merits of upcycling and repurposing, architectural salvage and adaptive reuse. Well today we hum a new verse about re-tuning columns… In the snapshot above, Peter is trimming the top off one of two Greek revival columns deconstructed and salvaged back in 2006…
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66% Done, 33% To Go
This is my 243rd Rosslyn update in daily succession. It completes an 8-month streak of daily old house journaling, the 2/3 mark in my quest to post every day for one year. I marked an earlier milestone — six months in and six months to go — with a summary of the aspirations guiding these…
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Ruffed Grouse
The male ruffed grouse in the photo above was documented on a Rosslyn wildlife camera about a year ago. Fancy fowl! And the two images below were recorded a few weeks ago. Rosslyn’s backlands are fortunately flush with ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), a welcome reminder that wildlife gravitates — as if by some primal sense…