The rain yesterday created a lot of ice once the temperatures plummeted again. My driveway is rather slippery and even inside the garage, where the rain dripped off my car, has some icy patches on the floor. An icy floor is fine for the ice caves but not where I need to walk or drive.
Icy Cave Floor
This newborn calf may be wet and a bit chilly on a cloudy May day, but he was better off in the late spring than if he was born today in the snow and rain on the icy ground in 35 degree temperatures.
Newborn Calf in Spring
The summer flowers seem so far away when snowing is falling this evening and the predicted rain tomorrow won’t sprout blooms when the ground is frozen. There are 325 species and 50,000 registered varieties of irises. The iris earned its name from the ancient Greek Goddess Iris, a messenger to the gods who was thought to use the rainbow as a bridge between heaven and earth. On a winter day, a picture of an iris is a bridge to summer.
One Iris
Some might dream of a white Christmas, but they probably wouldn’t put their presents under a tree which has its branches covered with lots of heavy snow as it might be a bit chilly to dig them out.
White Christmas
Back in the olden days, when school let out for the Christmas break, one of the tasks I had with my siblings was to cut the Christmas tree. But it had to be a “special” pick and not in the good way. We had planted pine trees for a windbreak and the ones we were allowed to cut were ones crowding out another tree so normally they were flat on one side or something else wrong with it. But the flat sided Charlie Brown tree worked well tight against the wall. Every year though, the tree seemed to grow five feet from the time we cut it until we got it in the house! This tree would have fit in with the Charlie Brown tree theme without a center leader to mount the star on, but would work if you couldn’t decide on an angel or star for the top and wanted both, if only you could figure out how to attach them to the twin side branches.
Charlie Brown Christmas Tree
Some of the apple leaves are still trying to hang on into the winter months even with more snow falling today. The cat can’t even get away from the snow up in the tree as the snow settled on the branches too.
Up the Apple Tree
The extra five seconds of daylight today wasn’t noticeable in the cloudy day as the winter shorter days continue for a while.
Winter White
The start of winter means the shortest amount of daylight in the year, but the sunrise will still get later until the start of the year before it begins to rise earlier again. The sunset time increases faster than sunrise to gain more daylight but tomorrow only 5 seconds are gained here.
Shortest Daylight
For those wanting a white Christmas, a new coating of snow fell today making a new white landscape. It wasn’t enough to level all the tracks in my yard from the critters but new tracks will be more noticeable. And now the pine trees have a decorated look again.
New Tree Decorations
Although cloudy, it did reach forty degrees briefly today and so there was some water running from the melting snow. More patches of ground appeared so a white Christmas could be in jeopardy. But with all the melting, it still hasn’t melted all the snow off my roof so I had a mini waterfall by the door but it wasn’t a pretty as the upper part of Two Step Falls on the Baptism River.
Stepping Down on Two Step Falls
