Tag: Icehouse
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Spirited Country Life
We make no attempt to conceal our spirited country life at Rosslyn. This exuberant existence — working, playing, rehabilitating, exercising, creating, gardening, and celebrating the abundance of Essex, Lake Champlain, and the Adirondack Coast — is a daily affirmation of life. Robust, often intentional, and sometimes serendipitous living. But what about the less vibrant, ghostlier…
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Sitting Sentry
Sometimes a poem is born of an idea once removed from reality. This even even supposed imagines Carley on “guard duty”, sitting outside the icehouse while I’m composing a tribute to her. I imagine myself looking down from the window above, observing her. A sentinel observing a sentinel. After all, isn’t a poet, a sort…
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Evening Emanation
This evening emanation greeted me while inspecting progress of the driveway improvements being undertaken by Bob and Phil, or *endeavoring* to inspect their work in the darkness that descends earlier and earlier and earlier this time of year. A glowing beacon. A bucolic barnscape. An icehouse lighthouse… After a year and a half of creative…
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Why Helical Piles?
Today Bob Kaleita and Phil Valachovic installed helical piles for a small privacy fence that will conceal the propane tank, generator, mini split compressor, etc. behind Rosslyn’s carriage barn. I’d like to dilate today’s update with a more detailed explanation of the helical piles concept and utility as an alternative to precast or poured concrete…
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Thank You, Steve!
This evening I return to thanks giving with a tribute to Steve Cooley. Over the last few years Steve has undertaken winter snowplowing, spring-summer-autumn lawn care, and landscaping maintenance (from hedge pruning to leaf collection and composting) at Rosslyn, ADK Oasis Highlawn, ADK Oasis Lakeside, and the Westport Yacht Club. And last winter he helped…
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Thank You, Tiho!
Although there have been a spattering of timely tributes to Tiho over the last few years, the truth is, I’m long overdue — *beyond* long overdue — for a proper tribute to the man who’s empowered so much of the renovation work that Susan and I have undertaken in recent years. Susan and I first…
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Pavers Update
We’re overdue for a pavers update, so here it is. This dramatic bird’s eye view of the icehouse terrace is the first capture of the icehouse “courtyard” we’ve been hardscaping for, well, many months! Installation of the stone pavers is about 99.9% complete. There are still a few pavers at the bottom of both stone…
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Logs Off to Sawmill
After felling five ash trees in the vicinity of Rosslyn’s icehouse and carriage barn with precision and arboreal poetry Aaron and Tony passed the baton to Phil and Calvin. There are still stumps to be ground down and logs to be split into firewood, but our ash logs have migrated one step closer to their…
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Deciphering Ciphering
I first heard the term “ciphering” in 2005 when we were renovating the Lapine House. Context offered some clarity: “ciphering” was used to describe job site problematizing, brainstorming, tweaking and tuning a step-by-step action plan, and generally massaging blueprints and construction schema into completable carpentry. From a linguistic perspective, describing the process of analyzing plans,…
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Screening
Still “ciphering” on the particulars of the enclosure screening south of the icehouse terrace. Four days ago I riffed whimsical on the subtleties of decision making for the privacy fence that will conceal the unsightly but essential infrastructure located behind Rosslyn’s historic carriage house). A mid morning meditation on enclosure inspired by ongoing deliberations on…
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Enclosure
A mid morning meditation on enclosure inspired by ongoing deliberations on the height and porosity of the privacy fence that will screen the mechanicals, propane tank, etc. behind the carriage barn (south of the icehouse terrace). So muchdepends upona borderenfolding,a framedefining,a hedge ora tree linescreening,veiling,a yardencompassing,a paddockor a stycontaining,a ringencircling,a cageconfining,a courtyard’ssanctuarysheltering,a harborprotecting,an embracewelcoming andnurturing…
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Lumbering Home
Hymn-along a song ofhomegrown timber,harvested within sightof the renewed icehouse.Hum, drum, and struman anthem hailinghyper local lumberloved, labored, arrayed.Felled and milled on site,then stickered and stacked,courses upon courses,a dozen years cured,between hemlock floor,and fir paneled walls,ceiling stained from fivequarter centuries.Once towering ash,elm, and poplar treesreborn as flooring,balusters, newels, railings. Canopied colossimetamorphosed intostair treads and risers,door…