A Walk in the Woods

Well this scenery is a long way from that warm tropical beach you're all dreaming about, but this is the scenery we get around here in January.  I strapped on my snowshoes and headed for a short walk into the woods a couple of weeks ago, in fresh deep snow.

The new young saplings mark the edge of the woods, but only for a short distance where an old tractor trail is kept open.  Breaking trail on snowshoes was tough going, so I didn't end up going far.

But the winter scene as far as I went was beautiful.  These big old maples along the fencerow where you enter the woods are amazing in their ability to hold the snow on their branches, at least until some warmer temperatures come along and the snow falls of its own weight.

Looking up from underneath provided an interesting pattern. Each branch was holding a snow blanket much wider than the branch itself.

The underbrush, here a dogwood shrub covered in grapevines I think, holds even more snow than the taller trees above.

I don't think I've ever come so close to posting a group of black and white photos, even if these are actually in colour - the colours of winter!

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Sunset

We actually had a spectacular sunset about 3 weeks ago, when we were driving home from a visit to the great fabric store in Cookstown, Ont.  I was able to pull over and take several pictures, while here at home there's a hill to our west, so we hardly ever get great sunsets.

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The Scottish Hebrides

I've written a post on the Hebrides, or Western Isles, that beautiful landscape of legendary islands off the northwest coast of Scotland, so we're a very long way from the Beaver Valley today.  I wrote it primarily for my on-line distance education course, and you can find it under my 'Scotland' tab, but you might like to at least scroll through the pictures and read the captions.

What I've tried to capture is not only the beautiful landscape (this is the Isle of Skye), but the thousands of years of history that underlie what the tourist sees today in visiting the isles.

It's a landscape of medieval castles in part, like Castle Eilean Donan, said to be the most picturesque castle in Scotland.  The layers of history before the middle ages and the 30 or 40 castles you can see today (many in ruins) go all the way back to the standing stones of 5000 years ago, and include both the incredible story of St. Columba's abbey on Iona 1500 years ago, and the later Viking onslaught.

And more recently the isles have been a large part of the 18th Century Jacobite rebellions, and then were decimated by the 'Clearances', when almost the entire landscape was 'cleared' of clan members, who were shipped to North America and elsewhere to become 'sturdy pioneers'.  Today you just see wandering sheep and scattered foundations and stone walls like those of this church on Skye where once there were close-knit communities.

It's both one of the most fascinating landscape and amazing histories in the world 

in my humble opinion.

Barns in the Sun

The past few weeks of participating in 'The Barn Collective', I've got really interested in all the barns around here, and in farming in general.  There are many many barns yet for me to photograph, and I"m thinking I need to make this into more of a documentation of the barns before they disappear.  It's the ones still in use, like these below, that interest me most.

I think this is one of my favourite barn pictures so far.  I had a shot like this a few weeks ago, but there's more snow now, and the sun caught the bright red barn better in this picture.  It's the framing provided by the tree that appeals to me.

The farm next door has a barn that is just really a one-floor drive shed, though I think they may have kept livestock in it at one time.  This farm sold last year....

And I think the new owner is moving into cash cropping, judging by these enormous rolls of drainage pipe waiting to be installed in the spring, hiding on the other side of the barn.

And here are three for the price of one, the third one a nice red barn in the distance.

This is that nice green barn I posted a picture of last week, but a view taken from the opposite side.  As you can see it's quite an extensive beef cattle operation.  Some interesting fences too.

And if you look in the distance you can spot 2 or 3 of the workhorses on the farm out enjoying a day in the sun with the cattle.  They share pastures in the summer too.

I think my posts on Sunlit Sunday are becoming a series of barn shots, as I also link in to 

The Barn Collective, but so far I've been able to find barns in the sunshine for you to enjoy.  

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and The Barn Collective

Fence Shadows

As I take my camera and drive around on sunny days in search of new photos, often of barns these days, I sometimes also find interesting patterns of shadows along fences here and there.

You have to be out at the right time of day, and see a fence from the right direction, to appreciate the shadows.  This looks particularly blue in the afternoon sun.

The shadows of this fence look somewhat curved, even though the fence rails are straight, but it's because of the curving snowdrifts to the east of the fence.

And just down the road, literally half a kilometer, is this fence, the shadows made more complex by the significant drifting all along the east side of the fence.  This fence is on the farm with the green barn I posted a photo of a few days ago, and in the summer I've photographed the workhorses pasturing here.

And this shadow is right here in our own backyard, back a few weeks ago when the snow wasn't deep yet. The bottom rail is buried now.

I've had several new Followers join over the past few days; welcome and I hope you enjoy following along.

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And (4 Days Later):

'Hide-the-Camera-Behind-a-Tree' Hoarfrost Shots

Shooting pictures of the hoarfrost Wednesday I also tried hiding the camera in the shadow of tree trunks, (as I do when I'm trying to get shadow shots sometimes), to see if I could capture the sparkle of the ice on the trees.  I'm reasonably pleased with the results; here they are.

We'll start right here in the front yard.  Standing on the driveway I positioned myself in one of the shadows of a fencerow tree.  It does show the sparkle, and avoids a lens flare from the sun.

I tried several different shots, but it was hard to get away from a bright-to-dark range in the photos.

These two are taken behind trees further down the road.  Roxie was being really well-behaved, as I took these while walking her.  Instead of pulling while I photographed, she just sat and waited politely!

It's a pity that these hoarfrost days are so rare, especially with blue sky to boot, and so ephemeral; it's pretty well all gone by noon.

 One of my favourites, though I didn't hide the sun quite well enough, was this twisted Weeping Willow.

Hope these are 'scenic' enough for 'Scenic Weekends', though they're a long way from that sunny beach!

Hoarfrost Morning

Yesterday we had an incredibly beautiful morning of brilliant blue skies and hoarfrost.  It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's amazing.  These are a few shots from around the yard and down the road.  The formation of hoarfrost is dependent on nights well below freezing, with high humidity.

The trees were sparkling against the clear blue sky.

The side of the woods and fencerows showed up the frost well.

This is a distant view over our meadow, showing that big elm tree across the road that appears in all the photos of our back yard.

A different angle in the backyard, over the gardens.  That's my butternut tree in the fencerow on the right.

The fencerow (and a lot of young ash saplings) in our front yard.

The white birch at our front door.

Two of my favourite sugar maples for fall colour shots.  I'm aiming to get four seasonal pictures of some of these trees.

Another view of the hoarfrost against the sky.  Beautiful.

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