Posts Tagged ‘sunset’
Winter Evening
Although February was a difficult month of winter weather for our region, I’ll mark today’s change of calendar with an image of the beauty that comes along with weeks of heavy snow.
Thank you to Cyndie for capturing and sharing this scene.
Happy March !
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Please Stop
Just make it stop. Please.
When I stepped out of work yesterday, this is how my car looked:
It was snowing again, perfectly timed with the beginning of the afternoon drive. Lovely. Happy Valentine’s Day, indeed.
My commute home started well enough, considering the low visibility and slippery road surfaces, but in short order, progress slowed to stop-and-go, rolling along at a snail’s pace. That tedious speed lasted for more than an hour, during which I enjoyed a deep meander through my prized digital music collection on my phone.
With little in the way of driving decisions required, my mind was free to pay greater than normal attention to the music of my memories that was flowing from my car speakers. It served as adequate distraction from how extra-long the commute was taking, until the flow finally opened up and vehicles started moving at dangerous speeds again.
Somehow, I was able to steer clear of the two lunatics who were unsatisfied with the reasonable movement in the left lane and decided to race ahead in other lanes to cut back into the left again, disrupting everyone’s safety. One of them chose to cut off me, without the courtesy of a turn signal.
The other picked a driver who chose to “fight back” with a classic road rage tactic of “tit for tat,” racing ahead to cut back in front of the first jerk.
No problem, it gave me a chance to slow down even more to grant them plenty of space to take their grudge well ahead and away from me.
Beyond those two scares, the only other challenges of disaster I narrowly avoided happened to be three separate incidents of police and highway patrol cars precariously parked to protect vehicles that had crashed and spun out.
It took me twice as long to get home, but I did arrive without calamity.
Shortly after, the falling snow stopped, and the sun even appeared for a couple of brief glimpses before setting.
I’m going to visualize this as having been the last snowy drive I will suffer for the rest of the season. To help start this new run of luck in my favor, my goal this weekend (like it was on Tuesday, last), is to simply avoid driving my car at all over the entire weekend.
Here’s hoping I achieve that humble objective.
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Couple Shots
I was granted the honor of walking our trash and recycling bins down to the road with Delilah yesterday, and at the high spot of the driveway, beside the hay-field, we paused to take in the sunset, as well as the line sculptures getting carved in the snow by the bitter wind.
It was photo worthy.
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Several Adventures
The Gulf of Mexico
We walked the beach
and trails of Lovers Key State Park, where we also paused for a picnic lunch
While walking, we came upon an osprey dining on a fresh catch
Barb & Mike got a crash course on piloting a Segway (no crashing involved)
We toured the multi-million dollar neighborhoods of Naples
and I barely eked out a vague capture of the sunset for Steve R.
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Frosty Landscape
Not just frost, but rime ice from a day of freezing fog! When I left work yesterday afternoon, I needed sunglasses due to the bright sunshine.
As I approached the border where Minnesota ends and Wisconsin begins, the color palette changed significantly. I had to lose the shades.
It looked like the fog I had driven through on the way to work in the early morning darkness must have lingered for most of the day. The last twenty minutes of my commute home was a glorious spectacle of varying degrees of frosty views against a dark gray sky.
It was fabulous. It reminded me again of how clueless I was as a kid when I vehemently trash-talked white-flocked fake Christmas trees because they made absolutely no sense to me. Why would anyone paint a tree white!?
Apparently, I hadn’t yet seen the real thing in the wild for myself. I totally get it now.
I tried capturing a few shots at home before the daylight entirely vanished, even though our property wasn’t quite as spectacular as the landscape I saw along the ridges between River Falls and our place.
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There was just a hint of sunset color showing through a thin spot in the cloud cover as the big orange orb was reaching the tree line.
How pastel.
And all of it, beautiful.
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Lone Straggler
Apparently, a pattern is developing with one of our Buff Orpingtons, that she lags behind the group when it comes time to return to the coop for the night. Cyndie describes a funny scene that happened the other night when she was feeding and cleaning up after the horses.
The chickens tend to congregate under the overhang at times, but we don’t want them in the barn, so it becomes an added hassle to navigate the door while going in and out during chores when they are present. Cyndie had shooshed them out, but one Buff stayed after the others wandered off toward the coop.
After the sun had disappeared below the horizon, that Buff showed signs of wanting to return to the coop, but acted rather timid about trekking through the snow to get there. She would get only so far and turn and run back to the preferred confines with the horses under the overhang… several times.
Cyndie finally made the trip herself, and had to coax the hen to follow her the whole way.
Silly bird.
Last night, I went down to shut the chicken door for the evening, and when I got there in the dim light of dusk, it was all quiet, but for occasional sleepy cooing from inside. I spent an extra minute or two clearing the track for the door so it would slide all the way, and that was enough time to give me the feeling all was settled in there for the night.
It was a pleasantly quiet time and the fading gradient of orange glow transitioning to blue-black of night on the horizon was gorgeous. I was just about to head back to the house when my conscience urged me to truly confirm all were present and accounted for before leaving.
Thank goodness for that.
I opened the big door to peek in and counted eight bundles of feathers. Luckily, in the low light remaining, I could tell it was a Buff that was missing. Not thinking of Cyndie’s recent tale, I feared the worst. I had already lingered long enough to know she wasn’t anywhere near the coop.
Where would I look for her body, I wondered.
I stepped away from the coop, toward the barn, and what do I find?
That lone straggler timidly trying to decide if she wanted to walk all the way back to the coop all by herself. Silly bird.
I can’t help thinking how sad it would have been for her to finally make it all the way, only to find the door sealed for the night, if I had dashed back to the house without looking inside to count them first.
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Cyndie’s Shots
Cyndie has always been incredibly generous about allowing me to post photos she has taken. Lest there ever be doubt, I add her name to the bottom right corner of images of hers that I use.
On my way home from work yesterday, I received a series of images texted from Cyndie that reflect scenes she had captured during the day.
“Why, yes, I’d love to use them!”
First off, this fascinating shot reveals that a couple of deer decided to lay down in the middle of a trail, for a long enough time that they melted the snow all the way down to the ground.
That’s a first. With all the excellent cover available, these two chose a large clearing for their naps. Must be feeling plenty safe on our property.
Notice what a difference a few days makes with regard to the snow sticking to the trees. Scroll down a couple of posts and compare this shot with the two I posted a couple of days ago.
There is still plenty of snow out in the fields. Cyndie framed up this gorgeous view of snow drifting around a culvert.
Delilah looks so stoic as an accent to the shadow and shapes below her. I love the perspective of different elevation this provides.
Finally, there is this beautiful sunset.
If you can make out the chicken coop in the distance, the low sun is shining through it such that it looks like a light is on in there.
It’s fair to say that Cyndie has probably contributed more pictures to this blog in the last year than I have.
For that, I am extremely grateful. Thank you, C!
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Stormy Monday
It’s not original, but I couldn’t help myself with that title. It was stormy last night. What can I say?
The weather service warnings and the radar images looked more ominous than what we ultimately experienced, but there was still plenty of bluster and a relatively quick 2-inches collected in the rain gauge. The main thing that moderated the impact was the speed with which the storm line was moving.
The wind burst was short-lived and the rain lasted only about a half of an hour. Then a sky-show followed when the sun popped out to illuminate the last minutes before it dropped below the horizon.
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I had stayed in the house while Cyndie and Delilah were scouting the grounds to assess for damage, but soon received a text from her reporting the clouds were worth my heading out to see.
In addition to it being wonderfully scenic out there, the air temperature had dropped by almost 20 degrees, making it noticeably more comfortable, too. I strolled the long way around to return to the house and came upon our regular visiting white tail doe with two fawns grazing in our back pasture.
I think I startled them, as they made a hasty exit through, and over, the fence to disappear down the trail into our woods.
We are counting our blessings to have experienced such minimal disruption to our property. The only obvious evidence of the intensity our trees endured was the number of leaves scattered on the ground.
Maybe the storm drained off the most dangerous energy before it arrived to us. News reports last night indicated the Red Wing airport, just 20-minutes south of us, clocked a wind gust at 82 mph, which knocked down some hangars.
Leaves us hoping that Tuesday won’t be just as bad.
I don’t see how it could be, since the heat and humidity that fueled the severe weather yesterday has now been replaced my much cooler and dryer air. Yesterday morning was so warm and humid at 5:00 a.m. that even the rear view mirror mounted to the windshield in my car was steamed up during my commute.
The television broadcast meteorologist was marveling over the fact it had been cloudy all day and still the heat index climbed to 89 degrees (F). The high dew point temperature in the 70s was an obvious contributor to that.
At least, according to the song, the eagle flies on Friday, and Saturday I go out to play.
Yes, it was a Stormy Monday.
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Relative Something 