Here is my entry for Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Roads.
A look at West Street from the 100th-floor observatory of NYC’s One World Trade Center, August 2018.
A snowy road in Central Park, January 2020.
Tag: snow
Snowy Central Park
It hasn’t snowed much this winter. But a couple weeks ago I was lucky to be in NYC on a snowy afternoon.
Mail Icicles
The post office had some cool icicles the other day.
The grasses below collected and reforged their drops.
O is for Offseason #AtoZChallenge
Finally this year I was able to visit the beach during winter. I had always wanted to go there during its offseason, just to know what it was like to walk next to the ocean in opposite weather of what I’m used to.
It was as beautiful, windy, and cold as I had guessed it would be.
F is for Flowers Freezing #AtoZChallenge
We had a warm streak in early March that lasted long enough to trick the early flowering trees into blossoming. Too soon, little flowers, too soon. The snow stuck around for a day or two, followed soon by another storm with much colder temperatures and more snow.
Finally, a month after this photo was taken, the time was right for the trees to begin opening.
It seems that weather patterns have been disrupted lately. Winters are not predictable as they once were, turning into a mixture of a heat wave one week and an arctic blast the next.
These trees that I photographed are decorative—planted in my neighborhood to look pretty and not to provide food. But these same erratic weather patterns are affecting and will continue to affect our fruit trees, other crops, and food supply. For example, fruit and nut trees need a certain amount of cold weather, or “chill hours,” in winter in order to produce fruit during the growing season. Peach farmers in Georgia are expecting an even worse year than last year’s crop yield, in part due to record low amounts of chilling hours.
Let’s hope we can stop climate change before we run out of food.
F is for Freeways
Today I’m combining challenges. It’s F day in the A to Z Challenge (I suppressed the urge to publish a blank post with the title “F is for Fuck it”). This week at Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge, the theme is Freeways, Highways, and Expressways.
This first photo was taken while riding on the infamous New Jersey Turnpike. (I recently watched Three Amigos for the first time in forever, so I had to use the word infamous.)
This photo was taken last summer in Virginia. You may be able to see the satellite dishes and other communication equipment that are part of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.
This one was taken on a snowy New England road.
These last two aren’t really freeways, but Cee said that’s OK 🙂
***
I’m participating in the A to Z Challenge for the month of April. The idea is to post every day, except Sundays, and end up with one post for each letter of the alphabet. It’s a good challenge to help me to blog every day.
Forest Floor
I’ve heard that wine is sometimes described as having an earthy characteristic called forest floor. I would imagine the wine from this place to have notes of:
- Fairy dreams
- Foxes’ schemes
- The tears of a lost baby bunny
- A frog’s discarded to-do list
- Echoes of worms’ screams from robins pulling their breakfast
Spring’s Softness
Soft spring snow in early sunshine
Pale pink blossoms gently color the tree branches
Just One More
We got a touch of snow today. Just an inch or two, but it was enough to make me happy. I’m feeling in-between, like the weather is right now. I’m ready for spring to come, but I’m also happy to get one more snow. Just to have a chance to appreciate it and say goodbye.
Once more into the snow boots, dear friends. One more pass on the car with the scraper. A few hundred more tiny flakes on my face, and then I’ll be ready to put it away for the season.
We might even get a dusting on Sunday. Then next week it’s temps in the 60s and 70s, so this feels like the end of the snow.
But, you never know, there’s always a chance of getting one more monster snow storm in March/April that will completely blanket the town in ice crystals. The in-between times can be kind of fun.
Things That Are Rough: Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge
Here’s my entry for Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge: Things That Are Rough. Some textured bark on a pine tree.
What was once an inviting, fluffy mountain of snow is now a dirty pile of chopped ice. It melts a little each day but freezes again at night. Try to play on this and you’ll slip, the rough chunks of ice scratching your hand as you brace your fall.
I featured this photo of the catci in a recent post about a trip to a rose garden last summer. Thanks to my friend Maria F., I now know their name: Opuntia humifusa. Thanks, Maria!
Here’s a very happy bee on a pointy thistle.
This is rough on an emotional level. When I read the note that was scratched into the painted-over glass windows on a padlocked door to an abandoned house, I couldn’t help but wonder about the circumstances. More photos and speculation in this post from several months ago.
Cynthia M Voss 