Tag: Landscaping
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Stone Paving Icehouse Courtyard
The title of this post conjures a hot summer’s day along the highway, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, slooowly advancing through a construction site where hot asphalt is being laid in a stinky, tarry, gravelly layer, then rolled flat and smooth with an enormous steel drum ballasted with water, pressing the roadway into submission. Paving. We’ve…
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Hedging
This summer of rain our evergreen hedges have rioted, sprouting enthusiastically, reaching upward and outward, unruly, wayward. Time for hedging! So much water and months of temperate weather have invigorated our well-established yews and hemlocks. As we’re only a week and a half from flipping the calendar from summer to autumn, we decided it was…
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Before Time Runs Out
Since returning home to Rosslyn almost two months ago after a capricious walkabout with Susan, Denise, and John, some of the joy and celebration of homecoming has been overshadowed with waiting, delays, anticipation, setbacks, deferring, etc. This tension between ebullient gratitude and serial deferral is sometimes motivating, sometimes profoundly vexing. Lately, more of the latter…
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Move-In Begins
At last, icehouse move-in begins! We’re not yet 100% finished with the icehouse rehab, but we’re close. Really, really close. Inside, at least. Outside, less so. Plenty of hardscaping and landscaping still in the works. But the interior is super close. I need to put the finishing touches on my loft cabinetry, and Peter needs…
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Misty Morning
Much more rain than sunshine these last five or six weeks since we returned to Essex from our cross-country walkabout. Drizzly slow-soakers and sudden gully washers. Never-quite-dry, musty mushroom weather. Lake Champlain riding almost three feet in a couple of weeks, anemic artichokes in the garden, poppies stunted with blooms battered. Rainy day delays compounding…
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Hydroseeding Icehouse Environs
A quick post this evening to thank Bob and Eric for hydroseeding the soon-to-be-grass lawns around Rosslyn’s icehouse. It’s been a disruptive 10+ months during rehabilitation, and given the site work and construction staging, debris, etc. we’ve become accustomed to mud, mud, mud. But today — at looong last — we begin the regreening. Hydroseeding?…
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Icehouse East Deck
With many culminating accomplishments to celebrate as we inch, leapfrog, creep, hurtle,… toward the icehouse rehab finish line, I’ve inevitably overlooked a couple. Maybe a few. One of those notable achievements is completion of framing and decking the icehouse east deck. Although we still need to finish installing plugs and oil sealing the garapa deck,…
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Synchronous Progress
It’s been a good week, and it’s not even over yet. Much gratitude is due the entire team as we move into a Friday with many moving parts and a growing balance sheet of synchronous progress in the icehouse, outside the icehouse, and throughout Rosslyn’s still muddy but increasingly springlike grounds. A photo essay (think…
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Icehouse Hardscape
In some respects, the most significant icehouse rehab alteration, at least to the exterior and surroundings, is the grade change north and west of the existing building and the new hardscape that will integrate this area with the rest of Rosslyn’s lawns and gardens. In the collage above, an interesting perspective captured with a drone…
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Autumn Landscape Poetry
TGIF… time to put another log on the fire, pour yourself something refreshing, and unwind for a moment together. Busy-ness and a continuous cascade of commitments can gradually hypnotize us during the weekly hurly-burly, so let’s take a few minutes to exhale and redirect our attention at this dramatic time of year. Transformation all around…
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Renderings for Icehouse Rehabilitation 2022-2023
If you’ve been following along over the last couple of months, observing from afar as we rehabilitate and repurpose Rosslyn’s icehouse, then perhaps a vision is beginning to take shape in your imagination? Or maybe you’re struggling to envision the future of this handsome but understated utility building? I’ll be sharing design and structural plans…