The Things You See With a Camera

Snow everywhere! It is awe inspiring. Those who fancy they are sick of winter and dislike snow are certainly in trouble around here today.
Elv invited us all to run errands with him this morning. At first I declined...choosing the warmth of my wood stove and comfortable, dry indoors rather than the pleasures of an adventure...on second thought, "I'll come". It's been awhile since I had just such a chance at taking pictures of everything snowy. A blizzardly dump of snow does creative things to the our ordinary world view, so to speak.

           

 The flag flying behind snow covered branches. This is the first thing I noticed when I looked out the door at our changed world this morning.

Highway 27 going north into Hayward this morning. Yes, I edited the picture, just color a little bit. It really looked like this.

27 North of Hayward and through the blowing falling snow we saw people? or something on the road.  Whitetail deer. Three of them.  They stood there hesitantly and seemed loathe to leave the road as we came along.
And no wonder, once they plunged for the woods we understood.  They were suddenly in the ditch struggling to get through, swimming in snow over their backs.  If you look closely at the next picture you will see one of them there just at the foot of that most obvious tree trunk. They finally broke through into the woods that wasn't quite as deep.

 Here we come, driving on Lance's freshly plowed woods trail. Beloved Jeep, getting us through to any and all of our adventures in the woods.

So someone was using pink ribbon to mark wood, or a trail? or a boundary line. Couldn't resist taking a shot of it standing out so proudly in the white wilderness.  Isn't it pretty? Best use of pink I've ever seen, If you want to know my opinion of pink.

 We eventually came on to this huge machine plowing snow.  Lance is the operator.

Standing in the snow by the trail and throwing snow at their dad. Yeah, I did...hit the boost button just once and got this burst of color. Neat, don't you think?

 Do you see that blue in there? We began to see this along the tops of all the snow banks by the trail. It has something to do with light through the snow. I took the pictures not at all sure that we'd be able to see it on the pictures themselves. Well, here it is. This picture is untouched. Is this the same thing that you see on the ice along Lake Superior in the spring when the the ice pack comes in looking like it got dunked in blue dye?

I "boosted" this one just to see what would happen to the blue color.

We found this on Mosquito Brook Rd: Cattails, old left over bridge pilings, water, and that snow for framing.

February Pursuits, Valentine's Day

 

Francis decided to crochet a scarf and mitten set for herself.  She completed her scarf crocheting, but became bogged down with the mittens. Finally, she asked me to knit her mittens. I have been trying to knit again, just to see if I can. I can. So I knitted mittens for her.  She added the crocheted edging to both mittens and scarf.

Gwen and Myle's snowman has a new cloak of snow this morning. He looks like he is running away. But he will just have to stand there and wait for spring to release him.

 How much snow is that? We haven't had March yet, so we'll get to measure again.

A little macro of the snow. I thought snow was white, but on a morning like this one, you have to wonder.

Nimrod earned his name by promptly ridding us of the resident rodent vermin. But he hates cold weather and tries to get in every time the door opens.

It's Valentine's Day today. Yesterday a big house on the lake burned to the ground while the firemen dragged hose through deep snow and hauled water with trucks and pumped water from the lake trying to put the fire out. Elv finally got off to work around noon. By afternoon when it rekindled, they tried to pump the lake into the basement so that the fire warden would be satisfied that the fire was actually out. The firemen were fagged by midnight when they finally were able to leave the fire house for the last time. Mr. Fire Warden can now bring in his detective dogs to see what caused the fire if they can still tell after the great deluge. Somehow, I don't think my fireman is going to be enthused about anything but snoring in his recliner by the fire on this Valentine's Day evening.

I noticed that by last evening all the glamor and glory to fire fighting had left the scene. The few men who stayed by till the end are the great firemen. It was hard, dirty, cold, slogging work with deep snow, clumsy hoses, spilled water, soot, smoke, and  an all encompassing weariness. I ask you, at exactly what point in the trudge last night were these guys free to give up and go home? As soon as they were tired of it? Maybe as soon as they started to feel like they'd breathed too much of that awful smoke. Why not decide when it rekindled that it somehow was not their problem anymore?

Thankful today for a faithful husband who takes good care of me and ours.

Made them stand outside in the cold for this one. Happiness!

Josh and Frank, please come back here 30 years from now and let me take another picture of you two and his roses. Won't that be fun? May God bless you with many years of Happy Valentine's Days.

My February Garden

It is 9 degrees below zero this morning again. The garden lies under a thick blanket of snow. Asleep, so say the romanticists.  It is just dead, guys. Let's just be real. I went out as the sun was coming up to take pictures of it. Those warnings about frostbite on exposed flesh in x amount of minutes are probably true according to the way my camera hand felt when I got in.

 The zinnia row rattles brown and cold above the snow. There is a certain interest of color and texture here. Blues and browns. Winter.

We willingly hold the memories of summer and happiness. But that is only half of any story. Before summer and spring is always a winter. We don't savor our winters so much though, do we? That is as it should be, I think. Winter is and must be, but it is in spring and summer we rejoice, both in the seasons of our gardens and our hearts. Heaven will be eternal summer, don't you think?

The snow is so deep that the pine boughs are caught and pinned to the ground.

 Oak leaves, caught in their falling in the bean trellis, hang stranded until spring. We failed to clean off the old vines last fall. Nor did we get much of a crop of beans and allowed them to dry right on the vine.  If you look closely at the next few picture you will see pods hanging. When they fall into the warming soil next spring; we will have volunteer pole beans. For now they wait, cold and frozen in the pod. Death and resurrection is in every bean seed and in every garden.

 Where we live snug and warm this long, cold winter.

 The smoke from the living room chimney catching the first sun.

The way the arbor looked last summer at the height of living glory.

The way it looks now.  This is beautiful, too. It is just that winter is a different pretty than summer. You only have to know how to see both to enjoy it.