Day 393

Today, the temperature was 29 degrees in the morning. I found this frozen puddle in our parking lot.

Day 392

Today, the sky was clear, and the snow was melting.

This is the sunlight reflecting off the wet parking lot.

Day 391

Today, we had snow from late morning until late evening.

Day 136

Today, we woke up to a light coating of snow and drizzling rain. The snow quickly dissolved, as the rain continued. Snow isn't uncommon in March, in Richmond, VA (we've had heavy cabin fever inducing snow before), but of course no one recalls that when the snow comes in Spring. Granted having nice days followed by bitter cold isn't fun, but that is what Spring is like here. I'm expecting another 2 months of rain. March, April and May showers bring on the flowers here...so expect a lot of wet flower photos...or in this case wet and frozen.

This is a flower from a Dogwood tree in my front yard. I squeezed this one to see if the water was frozen or not. It wasn't, but that would have been neat. Since the flowers were facing up, they are like little cups when filled with rain.

This Rhododendron had ice melting off of it and rain drops on it.

Some of the Vinca had snow on it. All of it was wet.

The upturned petals of the hyacinth had rain glistening in them. This one is so shiny, you can see me a bit.

Since it was really cold outside, I went back in quickly, to warm up. This squirrel butt greeted me.

Later in the morning, we headed to the city to meet some friends for brunch. After brunch, I took some photos from the passenger side of the tree lined streets. Remember when I said, I wouldn't stick the new fancy camera out of the car window. Well, I lied. Really, I just rested it on the window sill and pointed it up.

As we crossed the main bridge to our house, John said I should take photos of the James River. He purposely drives in the far right lane, so I have a better chance of clear photos. This one has been cropped to exclude the guard rail.

These are the train tracks by our house. They are tricky to photograph, so my husband slowed down when we crossed them.

Day 77

Last night, it snowed. This morning, when I took Alex to the bus stop, I noticed the snow was in a lacy formation. It was in the process of melting. About an hour or two later, it was all gone.

This was on our steps. It's a leaf trapped under the melting snow.

This leaf is of course on top of the snow.

The top of this photo has a heart melted into the snow. I did nothing to form this. Through this project, I'm actually starting to look forward to snow, which is something that I haven't done in years.

This is snow clinging vertically to this plant.

This melting snow on the Camellia bush, looked a bit like a skull. Of course, I liked it.

Day 68

Last night, it rained and I took photos then of the ice clinging some plants. However, it was dark, so I couldn't see very well past the area I was in...our front yard. While I was driving to the post office this morning, I noticed that the trees were covered in ice. When I got back, I took some photos in our neighborhood and yard of some of the frozen plants.

This is ice in a drop formation on a tree branch.

This is ice covering the bud and limb. The whole tree was like this. Some areas, like above, had frozen drops.

While I was taking photos of one tree, I heard a crow caw above me. I looked up to see it perched in a barren tree. Hopefully you can spot the bird amongst the limbs.

The leaves and branches of this bush are encased in ice.

The pine needles on all the pine trees were weighted heavy with ice.

Day 67

Today was cold. Late in the evening, rain started. I realized that I hadn't taken photos yet and had to remove the soft sweet kitten from my lap to venture out into the cold for the sake of photography. The kitten wasn't happy about this, but thankfully I've learned how to do this quickly, so she snuggled up again when I came inside.

Since it was so cold, the rain drops on the leaves (and anywhere else) were freezing in drop formation. This was really neat and was something I would have missed had I not been slacking off on taking photos during the day. Again, I played with the flash and macro settings of my camera to take these unexpected photos. The longer drops are the most frozen ones. However, they are delicate. I touched one and it unfroze in my hand. All the leaves were covered in thin sheets of ice. They reminded me of glass leaves.

Camellia bush

If you look closely, you can see bubbles captured in the ice on the leaf.

Camellia bush

Camellia bush

Rhododendron bush

Day 62

The thin sheets of ice from yesterday had melted by 3pm, but there were still thicker areas and chunks.

Day 61

This morning, we had a shower of ice for a few hours. School was closed for the day, but honestly it wasn't enough to validate closing school. Alex and I went out to the post office and grocery store, which were both unbusy.

This is ice on the windshield. I had the defroster on, because it was a sheet of ice. This is the ice after a bit of melting. You can see the shadows of the trees in front of the car.

This is the bumper of the car. The clear area is melted/refrozen ice. The white is the fresh ice pellets.

This is ice on the Camellia bush outside of our house.

This is ice on a colorful plant outside of the grocery store.

Day 60

There is supposed to be an ice storm tonight, so I went out to photograph the area around our steps before they are ice covered.

This is a leaf that is caught vertically on our 1st step. We have railroad ties and concrete for our steps. The leaf is caught on a railroad tie.

These are pieces of ice melting on one of the railroad tie steps.

I like the bubble in this ice.

While i was photographing things on the ground, I noticed how lovely the trees looked when I looked up. I was sitting on the ground at the time. These are the trees that are on either side of the path to our house.

I wanted to take sort of an animals' eye view of the trees to the front side of the other trees.

Day 49

I have been feeling ill today. I woke out of a nap as I remembered I needed to take photos. I ventured out right before dusk. Most of the snow has melted. I like the ice crystal structure of the remaining snow.

Day 48

Today, while we were driving to Jason's Deli for lunch, I noticed the lake near by was partially frozen and had geese around it/in it. After lunch, I went over to take photos while Alex finished up her ice cream with John. I took photos of the ice, but I should have looked closer before taking photos. If you haven't been around geese before, well there is a lot of poo. So much poo, that there was poo on the ice. The below photos don't include those poo filled ruined photos. Though this blog is about photographing nature and poo is natural, it's not pretty and you don't need to see that in a photo. No amount of blurring in photoshop could have removed it and left recognizable ice. Gross. Ok, on to photos not about poo...

This is Fountain Grass an edge of the lake. In the background you can see the ice and water. The unfrozen part is due to the fountain which you can sort of see on the right middle area. Geese are opposite. This water has to be really cold. Apparently geese don't mind.

Here are some of the smarter geese that aren't swimming in the freezing water.

This is a seagull on the ice. Since we don't live near the sea/ocean (it's about 1.5 hrs away driving), we call them trashgulls as they tend to hang out in parking lots and land fills. The footprints in the snow are from the geese...I think. They were smaller than human feet.

Brown plant. I'm not sure what type.

Back at the house, I decided that the rock salt was photo worthy. It's natural, though not naturally occurring here. It's all over the paths and stair due to the last recent snow. It's tinted the path and snow a pink color. I tried to take photos of the tinted snow, but they didn't come out clear. I will try again another day, before the snow all melts.