The last flower to bloom in our gardens, surviving even freezing and a snowfall, is the yellow iris. This one glows in the light of the November 20 sunset.
Frost coats reeds and grasses and glows in the dawn at Baldwin Lake, Berea, Ohio.
Though the days have been unseasonably mild, they have lately dawned clear, foggy, frosty, and beautiful. Yesterday I stopped to enjoy scenes at Baldwin Lake. This morning I paused at the aptly-named Frostville historical village. Oh, how difficult it was to pay a rushed visit to those ice-decorated places in my travels on frosty mornings.
Early rays of the sun cause cold steam to rise from the roof and steeple of Frostville Church in the Cleveland Metroparks System.
A black cat, resident of a hardware store's property, peers out from the wheelwell of a disused industrial truck.
During a little exploration Sunday afternoon, we happened across a couple of “working cats” — felines that live on the premises of businesses, not strays but not housecats. One cat lives in the yard of a small town hardware store. There’s a large industrial truck parked permanently in front of the store’s windows but behind the firewood for which we were shopping. On the giant tire of that yellow-green truck was a beautiful black cat that put us in mind of our dear departed Missy. The kitty posed for a few pictures then, wary of strangers’ attentions, took off for parts more secluded. Stopping by at a nearby winery we sighted another cat sunning and grooming itself on a sub-roof near the main entrance. Kit paused, took a good look at us, then went about its business and we did the same. The wine wasn’t very good.
A cat suns and grooms itself on the shingled roof of a winery. Photo by James Guilford.
Tasha, dry and warm on the bed, watches birds flit to and from bird feeders hanging from the tree.
It was a truly miserable November day. Skies were overcast, temperatures never rose out of the 40s, there was rain, there was rain with ice pellets. I started work on my 2011 photographic calendar. I ventured outdoors only to hang the freshly-cleaned bird feeders and travel to Taco Bell for lunch. That was enough. The damp cold seemed to penetrate to the bone. It was a good day to be an indoor cat… or a “cat” indoors!
Freshly-cleaned, the bird feeders were hung out today. Within a short time the neighborhood birds found the bounty and had some lunch. A red-bellied woodpecker and a cardinal were seen already. Shot through two panes of glass and a screen door!
The tall window at the landing in our stairwell. We have never put window treatments on that window -- the view of the sky, trees, and the light itself are too good to block.
The rising sun illuminates trees overlooking the West Branch Columbia River valley on a cold early November morning.
This day dawned bright and crisp making the commute to work more pleasant. Dropping into the valley, I looked around as I crossed the bridge over the West Branch of the Columbia River in Olmsted Township. The rising sun was kissing trees at the rim of the valley, trees that had so far held on to their colored leaves. I stopped for five minutes to snap some photos and enjoy the view and wished I could have explored the frosty fields I’d passed along the way. Hi-ho, it’s off to work I go!
A random spoonful of Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable Soup brought up an interesting word.
A random spoonful of Campbell’s Vegetarian Vegetable Soup brought up a surprise. BOX ??! I ran and got my little Canon G11 camera to document what fate and the soup spoon served up. But wait… the edge of the “O” is flattened. Is that a “D” instead? Well, mebbe, but I’m gonna claim that the word BOX came up all by itself from the bottom of my soup bowl. After all, BDX makes no sense, and vegetable soup is a sensible lunch!
Visible satellite image of the October 26, 2010 superstorm taken at 5:32pm EDT. At the time, Bigfork, Minnesota was reporting the lowest pressure ever recorded in a U.S. non-coastal storm, 955 mb. Image credit: NASA/GSFC.
It’s being called a “super-storm”or “weather bomb.” The storm we experienced yesterday was a whopper. Although many of us escaped any damage or danger {it was actually no big deal where I was sitting}, the same cannot be said for everyone’s experience. Tornadoes, hurricane-force winds, torrential rains pummeled many areas. The lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in a non-coastal area was measured within the system’s spiral. A weather satellite image is, at once, beautiful and frightening.
A strong squall line ran across the Midwestern US today. As usual the broadcast weather folk made much of the storm. Fortunately the severity of the storms varied along the line… there was wind everywhere but, in most cases around here, nothing damaging. In many other areas, however, higher winds, strong thunderstorms, and tornadoes ruined the day. For the rest of us it was a blustery morning, a rainy afternoon and here, anyway, an amazing evening.
Following the afternoon passage of a squall line, the sunset colored the western sky a vivid orange. Yes, it really was this color! Photo by James Guilford.
The incredible color of the sunset drew me out on to our balcony for my best vantage point on short notice. I got my slippers soaking wet and a few stray drops of rain on the camera … worth every bit of it. I looked to the darkening eastern sky and what should present itself but a huge, arcing rainbow –actually a multiple bow– spanning most of the horizon. Had to try and capture that image too. The little Canon G11 was just adequate to the task but, true to the reason I bought it, was at hand when needed.
Such was the scene after the storm.
A multiple rainbow graces the darkening eastern sky given an odd cast by a brilliantly orange sunset. Photo by James Guilford.
A Canada Goose sends up splashes of crystalline water as it enters Kendall Lake.
Today we visited the Kendall Lake area of the Cuyahoga National Park. Fall colors have peaked and trees are shedding their fading leaves, preparing for winter’s rages. Canada Geese still frequent the waters here; we watched them sitting in the sun and moved as close as we could to get photographs. I followed one as it plopped into the water to escape my approach. At high speed the camera’s shutter stopped splashes and water droplets in mid-flight.
Tiny fungi growing on the stump of a long-dead tree play host to a pair of insects the size of caraway seeds.
In the woods surrounding the lake we found colorful leaves, interesting textures, and various fungi. In one case I moved in to capture the patterns and colors of a tree stump hosting very small fungal mounds. As I did, I noticed two tiny dark dots on one of the growths and thought they were dirt. It turns out they were minuscule insects parked on the fungus and they moved towards shelter as we watched.
A trick of the light: Shadows from a nearby twig fall across the top of a leaf as we view the scene from beneath.
Later in our hike, while looking for singular tree leaves to shoot, I spotted an interesting shadow pattern: twigs and petals from a shrub cast their shadow on the top of a tree leaf that I was viewing from below. The spider-like shapes were interesting by themselves but chance aligned the background image of the twig with its shadow seen through the leaf. Just one of several tricks of light seen this fine day.
The light of the setting sun sets colorful trees aglow along State Road in the Hinckley Reservation of the Cleveland Metropark System.
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