Phantom Dolphins on an Icy Lake

Cloudless morn in the park as the sun rises into the sky makes for a strange phenomenon on the lake that is covered with a thick layer of ice.  Contracting and expanding creates a chorus of cracking, moaning, belching and popping, from grinding to thundering booms.  The quieter resonances remind me mostly though of the sound of dolphins.  It's mesmerizingly mysterious.  Standing on the pier, numbed in place, sounds rise and spiral to the heavens all around me. It's unimaginable to give up and retreat back to the warmth of my car; and it's impossible to remain there even a minute longer and not be frozen solid wrapped in my wool coat, hat and mittens.  Then the sound of a HUGE cracking of ice that travels from somewhere out there to under the pier and beyond makes me feel as if that frozen lake is going to open up and swallow me.  Hypnotic, narcotic...I can't seem to get enough of it.  I could stand there forever in awe!

At the end of the day I'm home, and topping off the ice encrusted pond is no laughing matter.  I'm not singing.  Bird bath heaters are exposed and frozen in place; back deck is sprinkled with bird droppings from what must have been a thousand winged poopers.  Rats...the Siberian starlings are at it again!  Each year another piece of expensive bobble is added in hopes of spiffing up the wintry bare-bones of these gardens, and each winter it still looks pathetically barren.  It's all aging like I have three lives to live waiting for it's glorious maturity.

Beauty in Simplicity

aka

Flat Broke Gardening

Eat your heart out, snooty Biltmore!

                      

Nature is never perfect,

and

that's what makes her perfect.

Dry Grass

Winterberry

Something

x marks the spot

Weed :)

Lake Rock

Sweet Bay Magnolia

Methuselah 

Mumbo Jumbo

Holly by Golly

Caged

Layers of Frozen

Star-burst pattern on glass ending bird collisions

Shadow Cave

Oooooooooooooh man!

nothin' tuh eat.