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
The early morning sunshine and warmer temperatures did melt some of the snow before it clouded up today, but the bare patches of ground won’t reveal any springtime flowers yet. Like many wildflowers, this flower has many common names including yellow adder’s tongue, in reference to the tongue-like shape of the flowering shoot which is suppose to resemble the open mouth of a snake. Another common name is yellow trout lily because the green leaves mottled with brown look like the coloring of a brook trout.
Yellow Adder’s Tongue
I think the chickadees were happy with the sunshine, which melted the snow off the tree branches, but there still was a steady stream of birds coming to the feeders even though the temperature where slightly above freezing. If they eat this much on a warmer day, I might not have enough bird seed to last the cold month of January.
Sunny Chickadee
Water was dripping off the roof as the snow melted on the warmer day and I added some water to the ground too as I washed the salt off my car. But the volume of running water was nowhere like the flow of the Ontonagon River before it makes several drops at Bond Falls.
Bond Upper Cascades
The trees are bare again as their frosty covering melted from the sun and with temperatures above freezing, but they probably will be coated again several more times until leaves are covered in leaves instead of frost.
Frosty Day
The missing object in the sky finally made its appearance and the sunshine and blue sky highlighted the frosty trees. But with the sun rays, the frost melted off the trees, at least for a few hours anyway until another layer of frost is added overnight.
Frost in the Sunshine
There isn’t much color out again today with the cloudy skies and the trees covered in frost again. The goldfinches are still eating the Black-eyed Susan seed heads but the flowers do not have their summer glorious colors.
Summertime Susans
It is always interesting how a new object can disturb critters. If I rearrange the chairs or put a new box on the porch, my super brave cat becomes a coward. And a new mirror located at ground level can cause a snarling fight with the “new” cat.
Mirror Cat
