How quickly the year has gone by. Here we are once again at the wonderful season of Christmas. No matter what one’s faith, there is a specialness to this time. If we look past the pressure to shop, the expectation of finding the perfect gift, any anxiety over meals, cookies, etc., there is still a child’s unbridled excitement over the mystery of the holiday. I encourage us all to focus on the joy and beauty that surrounds us at this holiday time. Our spirits can be lighter and we can be of good cheer, and with a bit of encouragement that attitude can become contagious and spread to many. May you find and rekindle the joy and happiness that can reside in each of our hearts and spirits during this time of year, and may you keep that alive within you as we all prepare to begin 2011. Merry Christmas!
Photography
Morning after the blizzard
This morning dawned bright and cold. The air temperature was hovering around zero, the wind was blowing sharply from the north, and the sun was crisp. Our surroundings in the Twin Cities had changed over the previous 24-hours as we had added 17 inches of snow to the five inches that remained from our last snowfall. With the forecast on Friday of heavy snow by Saturday, people were busy preparing for the worst. At 9:00pm Friday night the grocery store parking lot was packed, and all the checkout lines inside were 10 to 12 people deep. Saturday saw very few people on the roads as the snow fell all day long, with the wind blowing it into drifts that were beautifully artistic, not to mention deep. I’ve learned that in a snow of this type, you do NOT wait until the snow stops to shovel. Those people who didn’t begin to shovel until today were faced with snow up to their knees, and that was once they had cleared a way to get out the door. For all the gray and snowy skies of yesterday, the bright sunshine today was welcome, even if the temperatures stayed only in the single digits. It is a beautiful white landscape here, and I’m sure it will be a white Christmas in the Twin Cities this year.
Winter’s textures and lines
The fluffy, powdery snow started falling Friday afternoon and continued throughout the night. By the time I got up on Saturday morning, we had about seven inches of fluffy, white snow covering the ground and trees. With no wind, it was beautiful! I headed over to one of the nearby golf courses. What I found was a beautiful study in the textures and lines of winter. The branches of the old oak trees were outlined in white. Their rugged bark was dusted with snow in places, and was a sharp contrast to the smoothness of the snow on the ground. And the side light from the sun was adding its own lines and shadows as it cut over the snow at an angle, sometimes creating a bright sparkle as it caught a crystal of ice just right. What seemed like a simple, nondescript scene became one of interest and beauty, and I found myself marveling at all the little nuances that were there before me.
American lotus
I was traveling south this past week for the Thanksgiving holiday. In order to avoid a nasty ice and sleet storm I left a day earlier than originally planned. This gave me a bit of time to visit the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Missouri. Located along the Missouri River floodplain, the refuge is on the flyway for migrating waterfowl and birds as they head south for warmer climates. As I drove through the refuge I was serenaded by the sounds of thousands of ducks and snow geese, all enjoying a gray late-fall day. Amongst the waterfowl were these past-prime American lotus plants and blooms. I’m sure that their bright blooms were beautiful in the summer sun, however their lines and shapes created beautiful patterns and reflections as the spent blooms rested on the water’s surface.
On the cover
I am excited to share with you the cover of the November/December 2010 issue of Northern Gardener Magazine. This is a publication of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society, and is crammed full of information for those of us living and gardening with the weather extremes in the USDA plant hardy Zones 3, 4, and 5. I am thrilled that they chose one of my photographs for their magazine cover. This image was taken on a morning last February when we awoke to a beautiful coating of hoarfrost covering our trees and plants. The white ice crystals clung to each stem and seedhead, accentuating their beauty and impermanence. For those of you that might be interested in Northern Gardener Magazine and/or the Minnesota State Horticultural Society, please check their website at www.northerngardener.org.
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