The old father time image often comes to mind when the year comes to a close. This pine pine might not be the father time image, but it sure has turned white like father time’s hair. The pine tree looks like a space creature from the original Star Trek series and looks worn out and old with the white frost covering it.
Tree Space Monster
Today marks the winter solstice, the first day of winter, and the day with the shortest sunlight of the year. Of course with the cloudy skies, the sun wasn’t visible anyway, but it also didn’t look like winter with the lack of snow at the moment.
Winter Solstice
The trees are bare and the ground has some fallen leaves which are mostly covered with snow, but today’s scene doesn’t have spring flowers blooming among the white covering. A few frozen and withered late fall flowers is all that you might spot under the snow since the snow season has just started and spring flowers appearance is months away.
Blooming in Snow
Spring has been put on hold since it is snowing at the moment and the petals of the bloodroot blossom are not open but they are still collecting the falling snow.
Camouflaged Blossom
I think the poor pine trees are as tired of winter as I am as they are weighted down with the heavy, wet snow which fell overnight.
Heavy Laden with Snow
The cardinal was singing this morning so I guess he didn’t mind the return to winter but I didn’t hear or see the bluebirds or robins since I think they are wondering were spring went to. But now the robin has had snow on its tail twice so hopefully it will only snow once more and spring can stay.
Doesn’t Look Like Spring to Me
The night brought a new coating of snow so many of the critter tracks are covered over with the blowing snow. But there are definitely squirrel tracks coming from the trees to my bird feeders and to my porch which they decorated my porch screen again with yellow pee – both this morning and yesterday morning. They better quit doing that as it is too cold to keep washing the screens.
New Coating of Snow
With new snow falling this morning, I’m not sure if the kitten will like to play in the deeper snow or not since last time she would keep shaking the snow flakes off her back.
Snowy Kitten
A new coat of snow covered the ground during the night temporarily covering most of the critter tracks.
New Snow Coating
Now that the Twelve Days of Christmas is over, I am ready for spring! The moon was out bright last night and would have been a perfect night to go walking except for one tiny fact that the wind chill was in the warning range and frost bite could occur in less than ten minutes. And I figured with my luck, I would trip on a limb under the snow and would freeze to death taking a walk through the woods. But then it isn’t much better walking in the cold sunshine as the temperatures haven’t improved much. There are some critters tracks in the snow but I won’t be adding my tracks today through the woods.
Update : Just after the sun set this evening, three deer came walking up through the trees in this area. They were bouncing and running around so I they don’t mind the cold as much as I do.
Cold Sunshine Walk
