wet foot

There's snow on the ground now, it's been there for a couple of weeks. So when I took a walk with my camera this morning I was trying to get some cool winter pictures. I went to a park here in town (which is only about 3 blocks from my house) that has a pond. I was walking along the edge of the ice where the bank meets the pond and saw a cool ice formation out on the ice but near shore. I figured I'd take a picture of it and walked closer to it, still on the snow because I wasn't any too confident in the strength of the ice. When I got close the snow I was on broke and I fell down into the water...the snow had drifted over the ice so when I thought I was stepping on dry ground I was really stepping on ice. It was only shin-deep but it still got my heart going and my feet wet. If I'd have been thinking I'd have taken a picture of my feet in the water - like I sometimes do for this blog. But I wasn't thinking much - just reacting.

This is just down the shoreline from where I had the ice break from under my feet.

I thought that the frost on this leaf was kind of cool

The ice on the pond collapsed a bit (my theory is that the ice wasn't very thick in the first place and when we got some snow it pushed down on the ice) and when it collapsed it meant that the water under it had to go somewhere so it flooded on top of the ice so the snow on top of the ice melted and then refroze as ice. (This reminds me of the time that I was XC skiing across a lake when I noticed that my skis were dragging more than usual. I looked down and they were covered with slush. It's kind of disconcerting to be in the middle of a lake and have water getting onto your feet - even if you know that the ice below the water is plenty thick to hold you up.) All this to explain why the background of this picture looks the way it does.

This time of year there are even fewer golfers on the golf course as there are bikers on the road - so I can get on it to get some pictures with no fear of being brained by an errant golf ball. There is also a stream that flows through and some of the ground near it is spared by the mowers...this grass stem got spared (O sweet irony! the peice of land nearest my house that is sort of untouched is on a golf course. Go figure).

This picture and the one below it are of the same stretch of stream. The one above this caption was taken this morning - the other was taken in January of last winter.