Five Inches of Snow

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.

Dogwood Buds In Ice

As I went to bed last night sleet and freezing rain were clicking at my skylight windows promising me a very good next day. There’s been hardly any snow so far this winter. Sleet and freezing rain with its resulting ice is NEARLY as wonderful to me as “take me back to my childhood” snow.

Morning brought the promised gift of diamonds in the trees. Off to roam I went with my buddy, my camera, before I even had breakfast. Pure delight. Ice on everything.

Ice on the many Flowering Dogwood Trees that have established themselves up and down the mountain. Ice on the buds that formed, long ago mid-summer. Buds that wait — autumn into winter into finally bloom time. Now encased in ice. Buds waiting for spring.

A New Season

Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida)

Evening. Last day of summer 2020. I am SO looking forward to a new season. A change of direction. Some positive actions and thinking in all this insanity. Up instead of down. Bright instead of bleak. Health instead of sickness. Bring on AUTUMN.