These salt crystals on the road look like rough gemstones.
We had a night of mixed snow and rain. In the bright sun of the next morning, slushy snow fell from the trees with lots of little plops, some of which made patterns like barnacles.
The stones of our front walk must have been warmer than the surrounding ground. I like the way the spaces between the stones filled with snow.
We had dinner in the dining room for the first time in…I don’t remember when. We had a little early celebration with my mother of Phoebe’s birthday, since my mother won’t be here for the big day itself. We had some sparkling apple cider and used stemmed glasses, which was novel for the kids. This reflection (or refraction, really) in the stem of one of the glasses caught my eye. Happily, my camera was close at hand.
These are some photos from a month ago, taken that same morning that I photographed the ice drops. The light was so beautiful that I went back in to get my camera after the school bus came for Phoebe. (The iPhone does quite well for many occasions, but there are times when I really want to be able to better control the focus and the depth of field.)
I do seem to be sharing a lot of photos of ice and snow these days…
I liked the way that these tall piles of snow managed to stay upright, nestled in the branches of this tree in our front yard. In the afternoon light, it even had a bit of a glow.
This photo was from Sunday. Now, remarkably, much of the snow is gone. We had a warm stretch, and lots of rain, melting and compacting the 2 feet of snow from Saturday down to maybe 4 inches. I thought that much snow would stick around for weeks! 2 years ago, we had a winter where the snow just kept coming, without the melting in between. There were a number of roof cave-ins around the area from the weight of all that snow. I like the quick melting snow much better!
Speaking of balance, I’m having a bit of trouble getting all the things done I need to do. It’s been another crazy stretch, with all kinds of commitments left and right. Valentine’s Day stuff for the kids. Work stuff. Home stuff. I have an early meeting in Boston tomorrow, and then I will collect my mother at the airport. The house is a mess, and I still haven’t found the guest bed. And I really, really want to share a story about a Big Thing I did last week. But I need to go to bed!
I also feel compelled to say that now that I’ve publicly announced my intentions to post every day this month, it suddenly feels like more of a burden to post every day this month. I know that’s sort of silly, especially given that I don’t actually *have* to post every day this month. And I certainly don’t need to do anything spectacular when I post every day this month. But now I have this strange compulsion to repeat the phrase “post every day this month.”
Did I mention that I need to get to bed?
When an object casts a shadow, the resulting shadow shape is dependent on a number of factors beyond the characteristics of that object itself. The angle and direction of the light, intensity of the light, number of light sources, and the shape of the surface onto which the shadow is being cast all play a role in the resulting shadow. When the surface in question is varied, the shape of the object casting its shadow gets transformed and distorted. Stairs, with their multiple planes, bend shadows that fall onto them into zig-zaggy shapes.
Albuquerque, NM. January, 2006.
At MIT, inside the Stata Center. April, 2010.
At MIT. April, 2010.
In New York City, going up to the High Line. March, 2012.
At the karate school, at a nearby Massachusetts town. February, 2013
At some point last school year, I started going on morning walks with a neighbor whose kids get on the school bus with Phoebe. We have a couple of standard routes, depending on how much time we have to walk. What with busy schedules and sometimes uncooperative weather, we haven’t gotten too many walks in this winter. We did this morning, and without any planning, we headed a bit off our typical routes. We walked down a couple of neighboring streets, and when we got to the signs marking the town conservation lands, we were inspired to wander up the trail. Our morning walk turned into a bit of a hike, and an exploration. At some point, the trail ended, and we kept going, heading through the woods in the general direction of our road. With no snow on the ground, and with the undergrowth in its rather sparse wintery state, the going was pretty easy. I We did end up crossing a few creeks a few times, using stones and, in one case, a fallen tree.
A little pond, frozen over and dusted with snow.
One of the streams. We didn’t cross on this fallen tree.
Close-up of the ice in the stream.
I was quite taken with these mushrooms.
Here are those same mushrooms, looking straight on.
See how fuzzy they are? (This is a zoomed in crop of the mushrooms. A ‘shroom zoom, as it were.)
I think this tree was flashing us.
You can see here how this stream was pretty easy to cross, via that little dam of rocks.
More ice.
I like ice.
A fallen tree, whose roots have been worn away, leaving a bit of a star shape.
Stump fungi. You can see here that there is a bit of fresh snow here. The big, fluffy flakes were just wafting down lazily, adding to the ambiance.
The ruffles of this fungus remind me of a flamenco dancer’s dress.
It’s so funny to realize that this place has been around the corner the whole time I’ve lived in this town, yet this was the first time I’d ventured in these past 13 years. I hope to head back in, and bring my real camera. (Not shown are the varied shots where I didn’t quite get the focus.) I was glad I had my phone with me, though, as it not only let me take the photos, but helped us decide our path a couple of times. (It felt a bit like cheating to use my phone’s GPS, but this was supposed to be a quick morning walk before starting work, not an all-day exploration.)
There was a brief stretch last week when the temperatures were strangely balmy for a January in New England, and we awoke to a thick fog on Wednesday morning. This is a photo I took from the top of our driveway, looking down our street while waiting with Phoebe for her school bus.
Photo taken with my iPhone, with the Instagram filter Sutro applied.
On Friday we awoke to a cold but bright and sunny morning and a very light dusting of snow. After going about the usual morning routine and getting the kids off to school, I came home and got ready to do some work. I’m not sure why it caught my eye, but when I looked out my back door, I saw something I hadn’t seen before: The sun had melted the very thin layer of snow, all except for any that was in shadow. On our deck, the railings cast their long morning shadows onto the deck floor, and each shadow had its own outline of snow. The angle of the sun had clearly changed since most of the melting, as the snow didn’t line up perfectly with the shadows. Instead, the thinner dark stripes had their white highlights, and the thicker white stripes were set off by a dark shadow outline.
Yes, our deck could use a good sweeping, and perhaps a scrubbing. But the leaves and debris add a bit of texture, right?
Below are 3 crops of the same photo, taken a couple of weeks ago on a bright sunny morning after a bit of overnight freezing rain.
Full size.
Zooming in a bit.
Zooming in a bit more.
collecting tokens 