I can’t fake a whole lot of enthusiasm for the week we’ve just had, and indeed are continuing to have. It started snowing on Thursday and has continued cold and snowy in small but steady increments since then. I usually quite enjoy the first few months of winter and I like the visuals of the snow, but I was hoping to wander around in nice fall weather for a month or so yet before having to dig out all the winter garments. Guess all the poor bulbs and garden produce I haven’t yet dealt with are pretty much toast as well–although toast is a poor choice of terms. More like ice-cubes.
At least the garden-devouring zucchini have been stopped in their tracks. I did my best to collect the zucchini when they were a manageable size, but a few got away on me so I decided just to let them “run” and see how big they would get. A friend of my sister’s actually *wanted* a big zucchini (she’s English, that’s the only explanation I can come up with for this) so I did harvest one of them to send along to her. First I emailed a photo of me struggling to hold it just so she’d be warned, and she wanted it anyway, so off it went to meet its destiny. Jim weighed it as a matter of curiosity and that sucker was 20 lbs (8 or so kgs). I was going to post the photo here but it has gone astray somewhere in the elaborate and variable system I have for image storage.
Photo number one was taken four days before the rest of the shots in this series. Quite a difference from the beginning of the week to the later part. There aren’t many shots of me riding, but every year or so I drag grandson Mark out to the barn to take a few for me–he’s *my* photographer. I can see lots of ways both horse and rider could be functioning better, but it’s a nice reminder of a lovely fall day, possibly one of the last for this year, although I do hold out hope that the snow will melt and we will enjoy a few more weeks of warm weather that is conducive to short-sleeve outdoor activity. I tend to be of the optimistic type. Not only is the glass generally half-full in my world, but I’m also darn happy just to have a glass at all! So I feel that it’s entirely possible that things will shape up in the next week or so.
That said, the rest of the shots are more accurate for where we are at now. Shot two shows the snow falling and accumulating on some of the bushes by the front yard bird-feeding area. These were some of the ones that had actually undergone some change in colour. A lot of the trees and bushes in and around here are still quite green, unusual in itself for this late in the fall.
Shot three shows part of the back yard. You can see how green things still were back there. That poor lady by the fishpond is likely feeling pretty chilly as she’s not well dressed for the weather. I took this shot the first day of snow. Since then the water has frozen over and the ice is about an inch thick. I got one goldfish out just before the snow, and had to keep trying to locate the second one who had been MIA for several days. I thought he had burrowed into the mud at the bottom of the pond for warmth, but he had apparently got himself wedged under a rock and was trapped, as I discovered when I moved the rock and his body floated up. I’m always distressed at these things but since they had babies this year (a state of affairs that I *do not* want to deal with) I’m a little less upset than I would otherwise have been, and hopeful that one of these years I’ll get lucky and have two fish of the same gender. I realize it is just a matter of chance as to what sex I will get when I buy a new companion for the one remaining fish, but surely the odds will work in my favour at some point.
Shot four features a few of the grackle flock who returned after the snow fell in hopes of getting a good feed, which they did. I love the iridescent colours on the males. This is another of the “through the window/across the deck/in poor light” shots, but you work with what you’re offered for these photos. When they are in close quarters to each other they do this weird skyward point with their beaks quite consistently, which seems to be a self-effacing posture to diffuse possible aggression from others. “Who, me? No, I’m not looking at you!!”
Shot five shows a collection of jump poles at Ebon, stacked up and ready to be trundled off for winter storage. Usually they are tucked away safely before the snow flies, but not this year. The far riding ring in the background is the one I was riding in for shot number one. Notice that no-one is making use of that ring in this shot!
©Copyright 2009 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.
