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.