Hoarfrost
In the early winter morning,
the soft, lacy leaves of a Japanese Maple
have been transformed into sharp swords.
If we succumb to a long, winter sleep,
we might miss the gentle frost
that melts away in a moment.
Mary Dahlin Graf
As I walk around our garden, little pieces of art show themselves to me. Most of the time, I am just wandering when they appear. Something makes me stop and look closer. I imagine how I can best treat the gift appropriately. Sometimes they need to be accurately represented with fine detail. Other times they can be converted into an abstract blur. Still other times they are best processed by photoshop manipulation. This time I used a touch of Photoshop and Topaz Degas adjustments to achieve the end results.
I love to walk in our garden and enjoy all the little gifts that are given to me!
Hoarfrost is amazing. The small ice crystals build up on each other as the frost forms. Here, the hoarfrost continued to build up over a two day period. The frost looks like multiple sharp spikes on the exposed Japanese maple branches.
I was prepared for a sharp prick when I touched a branch. As soon as I got close the frost melted. No pain!
The weather continues to be warm. It almost feels like spring. I need to remember that we are just starting the third week of winter. I am sure that the real winter weather is yet to come. So to keep things in perspective, I reflect back several weeks ago when a cold spell hit and we had two days of hoarfrost. It was beautiful but very cold. It was too cold for me to mess around with a tripod, thus my images are not as crisp as I would have liked.
Can you believe that it was 56 degrees in our Eastern Washington garden on 1 January 2020. It was over 20 degrees warmer than the average New Years Day temperature. I took the opportunity to spend several hours working (playing) in the garden both with my camera and garden tools. Such nice weather makes me excited about starting new spring projects early. But I must be patient and wait for the winter season to run its course. However, I can be contemplative and creative using my camera to record the progression of the season through the garden. Spring will come soon enough.
I have finally been able to get my website up and going again with all the malware removed. It has been quite an effort but it all seems to be working well again. So here is my first post of the New Year/ New Decade.
We rose early on the first of January to watch the sun come up. We were blessed with a beautiful bright sunrise filtered by the fog in the valley below our house. The sun was a bright spot on the horizon. Its rays gradually spread out through the foggy sky above and gently over the our yard below. It was a wonderful way to wake up, enjoy a nice cup of coffee, and discuss the potential of the year and decade ahead of us.
Here comes the sun
Lighting the world around us,
Harbinger of the bright decade ahead.
“Experienced tractors for sale – Cheap!” Here’s a little more history of the Palouse. Scattered across the Palouse next to old barns and fields are old farm equipment. Here was an anomaly. This enterprising individual had collected a variety of old tractors of the 40’s and early 50’s vintage (I think) and put them on display.
The site brought back early memories of my childhood growing up on an apple orchard in the upper Yakima Valley. I can remember riding on my grandpa’s John Deere crawler working in the orchard. It was hard to start with the hand crank in the front. But when it did, what a roar it made. I remember sitting on my grandpa’s lap pulling the turning handles to to make the machine turn. It took all I had, pulling with two hands and my whole body. What a thrill! I was heart broke when he traded it in for a wheeled tractor.
Driving along the back roads of the Palouse is an excursion of modern mechanized farming mixed with remnants of a bygone era. We encountered this barn along a dusty dirt farm road. My mind started to wonder who it was build by and when it was built. What was its and its owner’s history? It must have been a relative small farmer since the building itself was small compared to many of the large barns in the area. How could a small farmer survive? This one probably did not for very long.
Driving along back roads in the Palouse is a treat. Views of rolling hills caught my eyes. Graceful lines of hills and and the contrast of cut and plowed fields ran everywhere. I stopped to collect a set of images. As I got back into my car, I looked up to the embankment above me and saw this contraption of whirligigs looking over the edge. Farm implements have unusual shapes as this hay raker demonstrates. What is more impressive is to see one working in the field.
A walk in garden always prepares me for a beautiful day ahead. My eyes wander all about me. They jump from directly in front of me to the hills and valleys surrounding our garden. Then something clicks and draws me closer. I see a little treasure. I love the morning, afternoon, evening, or whenever I am walking in the garden.