Tag: Susan Bacot-Davis
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Dock, Boat Lift & Friends, 2010
This morning my friend, Mark, sent me a photo snapped exactly thirteen years ago (where does the time go?!?!) after we launched the dock and boat lift for the start of the boating season. In addition to a timely hint that spring is starting to flirt with summer — a meta metronomic rhythm reminder, if…
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Spring Aeration
April showers bring spring aeration. Soggy conditions May not make for the postcard perfect moments conjured by the imagination, but they certainly make for more efficient lawn maintenance. Powerful core drills sink into the supple soil pulling earthy plugs up onto the surface where they will dissolve in the coming days. And perforated ground improves…
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The Story of a House
At the outset of this sprawling experiment I call Rosslyn Redux I needed a way to describe the vision (as much for myself as for visitors to the About page.) So, in the springtime of this journey I settled on the only real point of clarity: Rosslyn Redux would be the story of a house.…
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Shirley Poppy
A day after my bride’s “polar plunge” in still frigid Lake Champlain, I’m swimming and drifting in the warm waters of Antigua, enjoying a free ranging conversation with one of my nephews, allowing salt and surf and steel band sounds (drifting intermittently from further up the shore) to exercise the sort of deep relinquishing that…
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35° Morning Dip in Lake Champlain
Among many curious characteristics that distinguish the dazzling Amazon who stole my heart 22 years ago, Susan actually enjoys cold water. Swimming in cold water! She claims that it is Scandinavian heritage (on her maternal side). And so it should come as no surprise that a 35° polar plunge in Lake Champlain is my bride’s…
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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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Paean for Pamuela
Sometimes we call her theair traffic controller —calibrating schedules,inventorying andcoordinating andunmuddling messes,managing myriadmicros and macros, andmultitasking Monday,Tuesday, heck, every day —also installing docks,feeding ducks and songbirds,soliciting bids andperhaps painting clapboardor pruning persimmons,brush hogging meadows, andwelcoming travel guests.In short she is all this —air traffic controller,conductor, ringleader,emcee and referee —but also cheerleader,advocate, confidant,colleague, and dear-dear friend.…
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Beyond Brook Bushwhack
A chilly afternoon warmed with laughter while bushwhacking on snowshoes, today Susan, Denise and John Davis, and I ventured into Rosslyn’s westernmost woods to trailblaze a new loop through a maturing pine forest located between Library Brook, the Essex Firehouse, and Essex Farm. Long anticipated, this remote route will extend and diversify our existing trail…
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Saturday Snow Day
No progress on the icehouse project today. None. By design. And by the benevolence of mother nature. Today we celebrated a Saturday snow day! Although Saturdays and Sundays are usually rest days for most people, our amazing team has worked through weekends and days-off for months in order to ensure forward motion seven days a…
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Genre Fluid
Today I offer you a quick follow-up to my February 4, 2023 post, “Genre Resistance“. In diving a little deeper into the genre fluidity of Rosslyn Redux (in general) and redacting Rosslyn in particular, I hope to dilate the creative quandary and exploratory process. But first, a couple of asides. First, yes, you read that correctly.…
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Cross-Country Skiing
What is the cross-country skiing equivalent of schussing down a powdery piste? If it exists — some etymologically Nordic, onomatopoeicly swooshy reference for scissoring smoothly across a snowy meadow or through a snowy forrest — I could sneak it into today’s outing. But I’d be waxing poetic. Projecting fantasy onto a considerably stickier cross-country skiing…
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Midpoint Milestone: 6 Months Down, 6 Months to Go
Yesterday was a meaningful midpoint milestone in my quest to post a Rosslyn update every day without fail for an entire year. Six months, 26+ weeks, 184 days. One new installment every 24-hours without fail. Rhapsodizing Rosslyn, celebrating our team’s accomplishments, soapboxing historic rehab and adaptive reuse, showcasing seasonality snapshots and historic Essex memorabilia, weaving in some hyperlocal haiku and…