Tag: Spring

  • Groundhog Day: Punxsutawney Phil Foresees More Winter

    Groundhog Day: Punxsutawney Phil Foresees More Winter

    Did Punxsutawney Phil see his shadow? Is spring around the corner? Are we headed into six more weeks of winter? In this high tech era of satellites forecasting weather from beyond the beyond, intricate algorithms gobbling gargantuan data sets, and media channels dedicated to analyzing and communicating meteorological mysteries in real time, we still get…

  • Sherwood Inn’s Boathouse ​Billboard

    Sherwood Inn’s Boathouse ​Billboard

    Does anybody recollect seeing the Sherwood Inn‘s boathouse billboard as photographed above. It’s well before my time, but probably not too long before my earliest Essex memories in the 1970s. I recently reached out to our friend Cheri Phillips to find it what she might know about the photograph above. She generously gifted me the…

  • Seasonality

    Seasonality

    Seasonality might strike you as a strange menu for organizing a blog (and an even stranger way to navigate a narrative.) But in many respects it may well be the *only* useful way to structure a circular story that’s slim on plot, chronically a-chronological, and deeply immersed in the poetics of place. Summer’s End Haiku As if…

  • Morning Meander

    My best days at Rosslyn start with a mellow morning meander to the waterfront to watch the sun rise up out of the Green Mountains. Or to the vegetable gardens and orchard to pick fresh fruit while sipping my tea. Or around the property inspecting flower beds and deadheading peonies or whatever else has bloomed…

  • Spring Meditation 2018

    Spring Meditation 2018

    Welcome to springtime in the Champlain Valley, a glorious but slightly schizophrenic transition — sun, rain, wind, hot, snow, sleet, etc. — when springtails make way for dandelions. This visual meditation captures the haltingly springlike transformation of a small corner of Rosslyn’s back acreage over the last three months. A meadow’s margin. A fallen tree.…

  • Snow Fleas: Soggy Snowmelt and Springtails

    Snow Fleas: Soggy Snowmelt and Springtails

    Snow fleas? That’s a thing?!?! Yes, you read that correctly. Yesterday my bride, my beast (a perennially curious and wanderlusty Labrador Retriever) and I explored some soggy-but-still-snowy woodlands along the western shore of Lake Champlain with John Davis (The Rewilding Institute) and Jon Leibowitz (Northeast Wilderness Trust). It would be difficult to find a more interesting…

  • Boathouse Collapsing in 1983 Flood

    You may have noticed that my blog posts are sporadic. Sometimes a post almost writes itself, exploding into the blogosphere as if channeled from the universe itself. Other times lengthy lapses betray my distracted dithering. Today’s soggy sentiments fall into the latter category. Maybe it’s denial. Ever since the 2011 floods, my anxiety upticks whenever rains…

  • Holistic Orcharding: Fruitful and Deer-full

    I’m excited to report that we may finally be able to enjoy Rosslyn peaches, nectarines, and even a few pears and apples this summer. For the first time since we began planting an orchard, several trees have matured enough to set fruit. Fruitful Orchard Those bright red mulberry will darken as they soak up sun and…

  • Spring Dance: Coyotes and White Tail Deer

    One trail cam. One location. Three months, give or take. Deer. Coyotes. And the transition from winter to spring in the Adirondacks’ Champlain Valley. The perspective, situated near a fence opening at the transition of scrub forest and meadows offers a glimpse of the dance between ungulates (white tailed deer) and native canids (Eastern coyote).…

  • Spring Soggies & Blooms

    The rain has stopped. At last! It’s a misty, moody morning, but the sun is coming out, and the rhododendrons are blooming. Life is good. SaveSave

  • Moist May 2017

    The Lake Champlain water level is ever-so-slowly dropping, but it’s premature to rule out the possibility of hitting (or even exceeding) flood stage. At present, there’s about a foot of clearance between the bottom of Rosslyn boathouse’s cantilevered deck and the glass-flat water surface. Windy, wavy days are another story altogether. [pullquote]With the first impossibly green asparagus…

  • Lake Champlain Boathouse Blues

    Welcome to spring in the Champlain Valley. And to Rosslyn’s annual spring drama: the Lake Champlain boathouse blues! Over the last month lake water level has been rising, rising, rising. And rising some more. In fact, it’s even risen since I started drafting this post. (Current level a little further down.) Boathouse Blues Begin Until recently…