It’s both of those things out there this morning. Not only is it pouring rain, but the wind is howling and the trees are doing a frenetic dance to its tune. The rain is being lashed against the windows. By looking at it out there you’d expect it to be really cold. But it’s 51 freakin’ degrees! Yesterday it never got above 33 degrees during the daylight hours. Cold and damp, too. If it had stayed cold we’d be having a blizzard.

It’s not really cold enough to have a fire going, but I started one anyway. It makes me feel better. I liked this rather creepy reflection of the fire and the rattan chairs in the sun room. Do you see Mrs. Cardinal on the bird feeder? Poor thing!

I am going to hunker down inside today. No way am I going out in that gale. I’ve already got the ingredients for dinner, (either Chicken Fingers with Chipotle-Honey sauce or Cornflake Crusted Chicken Fingers with coleslaw) so no need to do any grocery shopping. I am almost finished with my slippers and I hope to finish them up. Just one more sole to go (and I am halfway through that already), and then all the sewing up and weaving all the ends in. I have a good book to read too. And ... the Food Network is back!! Thank goodness! The dogs have some tasty filled bones that I bought the other day for such a rainy day occasion to keep their boredom away. Bella just went to the door asking to be let out. I opened it. She just stood there sniffing the air, watching the rain pour down and decided she really didn’t want to go out after all.

Wherever you are today, no matter what your weather is, I hope you stay warm and dry! I’m just glad to be staying home.

On the day I took my walk the sun was shining brightly. Everywhere I looked the crystalline quality of the snow was catching the light and acting like a prism. Just like someone had strewn jewels across its surface. It was beautiful. I tried capturing it so many times and each time when I viewed the photo back the colors were not there. The snow was glistening, but no prism action was happening through the lens. I took the camera off the mode I was using and tried a few different things. I finally got this image by using a slower shutter speed on the shutter priority setting at 1/320.

Well? What do you think?

The shadows this time of year are very long. Etched against the stark white background of snow they seem larger then life.

I was the only person to go down the forest path since the snow. The pristine surface so far had only been broken by the tracks of forest animals. Sometimes the shadows were combined with various animal tracks. These I think are rabbit.

These are possibly geese or swans.

Crossed paths!

Some tracks eluded me. Like these. A drunken mouse perhaps?

Other shadows were just interesting to me.

And to conclude, my prints and my shadow. How I hated to disturb the surface of the snow! Somehow it seemed as though I was an interloper here, but these woods know me well. They don’t always welcome me, but they know me.

A tiny trickle of water runs alongside the forest path. I found the patterns in the ice fascinating. If you look closely you can see what the water was doing when it became imprisoned. Delicate frosty fingers at the edges, little eddies and swirls; all held captive. Can you see the outline of a bird in the last photo?

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. We haven’t seen temps above freezing in a week. Yesterday it hit the 30 degree mark. Nights are in the teens and twenties, but so far no single digits. Let’s just say the temperature doesn’t fluctuate much from day to night. We’ve had a few little snows but nothing to write home about. It seems to come in dribbles and drabs. Nuisance snows are what I call them. Just enough to coat the ground and driveway, but not really enough to make it worthwhile to snowblow. A darned nuisance. We’re supposed to get another one tonight and into tomorrow. An inch here; an inch there. Big deal.

Even though it was cold and a bit windy yesterday, I bundled up in my warm down parka, slapped my “Elmer Fudd” hat on my head, grabbed the camera and went for a walk. After all the food over-indulgence of the holidays, Rick and I put ourselves back on the South Beach Diet for a few weeks and I figured a nice walk would help that along. What? You don’t know what an “Elmer Fudd” hat is? It’s the kind that has ear flaps on it that you can either tie up on top of the hat or pull down over your ears. I wasn’t trying to make a fashion statement here, just wanted to keep my head warm.

My goal was to walk through the woods and all the way down the road to Green Turtle (a little over a mile round-trip). I hadn’t been in the woods in a long time and a visit was long overdue. The sun was shining brightly which hasn’t necessarily been the case lately, a real plus when trying to take photos. I’m going to take you with me on the walk, but in small steps. I took a lot of photos! First we visit the part of Green Turtle that is right at the end of our street, the part where it drains out over the dam. As you can see: frozen. I tried to take a photo without my shadow in it but it didn’t have the same impact, so I’m in it, bulky parka and all.

Here there are some nice cattails growing even though they hacked a good part of them away this summer. Not sure why either, they didn’t look like they were harming anything to me. Because it’s the outlet for the lake, the water is not completely frozen here.

The ice that has tried to form around the base of the cattails look like glass UFOs, or maybe sombreros!  Very cool. Take a closer look:

My fingers nearly froze taking these shots. Old Man Wind was trying to give me frostbite! I was hoping that once I was in the woods I would be sheltered from him.

To be continued ...