A Chickadee (Paridae) shivering and fluffed up as the snow comes down, trying to keep warm.
As I see this, I want to make it into a Christmas card. Maybe next year’s Christmas card. Or perhaps pull out my pastels and do a painting, or maybe an oil painting. No action on any of those thoughts right now, time is a rare commodity.
I like all those ideas. Check back in a month or two.
It snowed overnight. Wet puffy snow has covered everything. I’ve been transported into a Christmas card waiting to be signed and sent on its way.
Pitch Pine (Pinus rigida)
It’s the second snow here this winter making winter seem a bit more like the way winters ought to be. The winters that I think of when I think back to Kilmer Street and that wonderful hill. A great sledding hill, and oh! those snow forts!
Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)
I’m roaming this morning. Me with my camera getting pelted with snowballs as the wet snow dropped from the trees. We stopped to get a picture of the berries of Smooth Sumac that the Northern Flicker, and Hermit Thrush love to gobble.
Smooth Sumac (Rhus glabra)
The snow has really accumulated on the leaves of the White Oak tree. Young White Oak trees often keep their leaves during winter. Other trees that have this same characteristic are Beech, and Hornbeam. They are said to be marcescent.
White Oak (Quercus alba)
The snow has collected in the Flowering Dogwood trees as if they are stocking up on snowballs. Getting set for that big snowball battle surely soon to happen.
Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida)
Camera and I follow the tracks of a wild turkey for a long way, until the tracks take a turn up and over a rock wall. We don’t feel like climbing.
Wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo)track. Glove added for scale.
The turkey’s track is about 4.5 inches long and the big critter has a stride of 2.5 feet. WOW!
Forsythia
The Forsythia has reached up, catching many clumps of snow. Stretching to where the sun might have been on any other morning. Stretching tall, other branches drooping. All waiting for the warmth of the sun. The warmth of early spring to be brightened by its blooms.
Perhaps those blooms will wait a little longer. I don’t think winter is close to being over. I hope not.
