The Christmas Storm that Wasn't

Merry Christmas to all this bright snowy day!  We're sitting here watching the snow fall, the presents are opened and coffee's been enjoyed.  I'm now wide awake!  We both enjoyed our gifts, three new sweaters for me and a blank cheque for buying plants for the garden next summer.  A gift postponed, but it will allow Christmas to continue all next season.

Merry Christmas!!!

Do you remember this?  It's from 5 years ago when I experimented with light painting while photographing our Christmas tree.  Perhaps it's a memorable enough image to stick in your mind as we move toward living out this memorable year!

Have a merry but peaceful Christmas and may Christmas be a symbol of hope for the future.

Onward and upward!

More Christmas Lights

 We left the downtown and headed for Harrison Park location for the Festival of Northern Lights.  We always enjoy driving through Harrison Park in any case.  Here you go!

We followed the little green Christmas trees down 2nd Ave.

To the entrance for the park.

There was a volunteer taking donations as you entered the display.

The tunnel of light as you start.

A gaggle of geese.

A few dinosaurs off in the distance.

I think this is supposed to be a boat.

Fish by the river.

And more (blurry) geese.  We drove around a second time to get more pictures.

The Winter Solstice was yesterday, so the days are getting longer.  Three cheers!  But for the next month a lockdown has been declared here in Ontario so we won't be going anywhere soon!

Festival of Northern Lights

 Every year at this time of year, for over 30 years, Owen Sound has featured its Festival of Northern Lights, an outdoor display of Christmas lights that people can drive or walk past.  Because it's outdoors, and most people view it while driving, it went on in conformity with the pandemic rules.  The other day we were in Owen Sound late and went to see them.

We started by picking up a sandwich and hot chocolate for early dinner and drove downtown (more on that hot chocolate later).  It made it a lot easier that the new bridge on 10th Street (immediately beyond the crosswalk) had just opened.  The city chose to name it the Gitche Namewikwedong Bridge.

    To quote the Sun Times, the local newspaper, "City officials say the name, which means Great Sturgeon Bay in Anishinaabemowin, will acknowledge Owen Sound’s Indigenous history – the city is within traditional Saugeen Ojibway Territory and was named Gitche Namewikwedong before contact by European settlers – but will also be an important gesture towards nation-to-nation reconciliation and restoring a relationship of respect and friendship with Indigenous people."

The oldest part of the light display extends along the river for two blocks downtown, and it's very popular with locals.

There are a large number of figures, of which some are painted on boards and floodlit.  There are also two Christmas trees; 

Some are small and some are big and complex.

The second Christmas tree.

And a happy dragon.  More to come.

A Grey Day on the Bay

We stopped by the bay the other day, and other than all the rocks scattered over the former grass, we saw more neat icicles.  Always amazes me how these form.

It certainly was a grey day on the bay.

I sat and waited to get a splash shot.  It's about 5:1 chances, and the bay wasn't really rough today.

Meanwhile there are plenty of icicles!

Snow Flurry

A couple of days ago we had another snow flurry which accounts for the white view we are still seeing outside.  And the freezing temperatures are keeping it there.  A few photos from the middle of the snowfall.

You could see the snow coming across the golf course.

A distant view shows how thick it is.

But a picture taken against the spruce tree out back, 

or even better against the two distant pine, shows the snowflakes best.

Today though is totally different, a bright sunny day with totally blue skies overhead!  Great winter day.

Winter Shadows

I've always liked winter shadows, and have a number of interesting shots from the past.  But now I must be satisfied with the same shadows of the same trees out my window.  Still it's interesting to watch them day by day and hour by hour.

A day after the big storm 10 days ago we had some nice sunny spells, and the shadows were clear cast across the snow.

They moved steadily through the day as the sun swept across the sky behind me.

By late afternoon they were pointing almost east.

Almost our entire backyard is in shadow from our house itself as we near the winter solstice, but you can still see the lines of these drifts in the shadow.  See how deeply the chair is buried?

A few days later we had completely blue skies one day; the shadows were clear.

At noon it was beginning to cloud over, but I noticed that our house obviously does not face due north or south.  If it did those shadows would be leading straight out beyond the trees.  My view here must be slightly to the northwest.

Not a shadow, but this is an interesting shot of a sunrise.  Mrs. F.G. asked for my camera early one morning after crawling out of bed, and shot this.  It's an outlier of the escarpment a couple of miles north of us, which sits quite a bit higher.  For a few brief moments the morning sun shines on the slope, outlining it clearly.