From Frozen Fog to Ice Invasion

Last night the wind came and blew all the lovely frost from the trees and later a freezing rain pelted the landscape. Our neighbor's tree is sagging under the weight of ice. (Click on pictures to enlarge them.)

What a difference a couple of days makes. This is the ash tree in our front yard today. There is a creepy cracking noise coming from the ice coated branches.

This is the same tree on Saturday when everything was covered in a feathery frost after a freezing fog night.

The ice is destructive. Our neighbors lost a large section from a tree. Another neighbor's yard is littered with twigs. So far we don't have any visible damage, but there are a lot of sagging branches.

I thought this was an interesting shot using my Olympus FE-370. It's a great 8mp point & shoot that Hubby gave me for my birthday in Dec. 2008. I switched to the portrait setting and focused on the icicles hanging at the end of the rain gutter.

No treks out to the back yard are planned today! I took this shot through the dining room window.

You can see the brass stencil spelling HOPE on the window sill. It was my theme word for 2009 and since my Hope journal is not complete, I'm just going to go with the same word for now. My hope today is that Spring will not come late!

If you look closely, you will see that the icicles on the back bumper of this car formed at an angle! The wind has been quite stiff from the East-Southeast during this weather event.

There are even strange diagonal stripes of ice going along the side of the car!

I tried to open my car, but I couldn't get enough ice loose to open the door. I gave up before causing damage that I would regret!

Even though the ice is a nuisance, it has a beauty of its own.

Frozen Fog Creates Fantasy Landscape!

This is what happens after 2 days of fog, virtually no wind, and temperatures in the 20's.
I love this scene that I can see from our dining room that I use as my art studio. We placed finch feeders in the near flower bed. A large hopper style feeder is hanging in the Prairie Fire crab apple tree along with a smaller wire feeder. The junkos appear to enjoy the lilac hedge and the drift of snow that goes through it.

Earlier today I hid behind the burning bush just beside the dining room window. I caught a gold finch at the feeder. I had not seen them since fall and there appeared to be no activity at these niger thistle sacks all winter. I was delighted to see birds feeding there this weekend. When I grabbed the binoculars for a better look, I saw the familiar markings of the gold finch. They have their winter plummage now which blends in with the neutral landscape much better than their brilliant summer yellow. While composing this post, I've been glancing out the window. Several junkos have gathered under the tree where they glean the seeds fallen from the feeder. And there is a surprise guest in the tree. After a long absence, there is a mourning dove!

We have regular visits from cardinals and blue jays. Their color is spectacular against the snow.

On Saturday we awoke to a different kind of winter wonderland. The sun was shining brightly after a foggy night. Instead of a delicate layer of frost, there were spikes of frost on everything. I didn't get out until mid day and the sunshine was warming surfaces enough to cause the frost feathers to fall off and were scattered on the ground under the trees.

These are the heads of sunflowers that I am now calling "Feather Flowers".