Nature is Never Spent

In my balcony garden, aside from the pine trees, I have one green thing left. It's been through ice, snow, and stretches of hard freezing nights without so much as a mulch or some leaves covering it. It's a still a bright, happy green. And most people grow it as an annual.

What is it? ( Answer under the cut! )

Yesterday's snow did not stick here, resulting in disappointment among those of us who hoped for a day off school, but at the same time a really lovely little discovery in the cold, cold morning today.

The snow had melted a bit where it fell, and on my car that left droplets that froze very hard overnight. (It also went into the door and caused it to be stuck shut, so that I had to get in elsewhere and kick the door open from the inside!) I think there was also still a lot of moisture in the air, and together they formed the most interesting windshield frost: little round bits connected by spiky, feathery bits. I've never seen anything quite like it.

And when I was out trying to open my doors, the sun was just rising and I caught the reflections of the trees and sky, blurred by the frost. In concept, it reminded me a little of a wonderful photo I saw once of a tiger's shape photographed through a frosty window.

I was experimenting with making some of my snow photos black and white because it's a good way to see the contrast, but some of the photos seemed to lose their soul when they lost their color. After a minute I realized, feeling silly: snow isn't black and white. When the sun is shining on it, especially when light is low... it's blue. Our brains process out the color and see "white" because we know snow is white.

The goldenrod stands through the winter, as tall as me, with the flower heads turned white and fluffy. They light up and glow when the sun gets low in the evening. I get distracted by all the new flowers in the spring, and I've never noticed what happens to the old goldenrod, when the seeds actually disperse and the old stalks disappear. I'll have to pay more attention this year.

I went out this evening to stalk birds in the front yard. Of course when I walked out, the doves whistled away and the flitting birds flitted off and everything went quiet for awhile. But I sat down and settled my back against an oak at the bottom of the yard, and in a couple of minutes the birds started returning -- sparrows first, then cardinals and nuthatch, and finally the doves. It was that time of day in the middle of winter when the sun is well on in its short march across the horizon, the light is bright but a bit watery and it makes the colors and shadows stark. It's lovely for being itself.

All of the photos I was taking of the birds were turning out to be blah, though, so eventually I moved up closer to the birdfeeder, behind some shrubs I hoped would screen me. It was a long wait before I realized the birds weren't buying it. They knew I was there and didn't want to risk coming back around.

For a photography session, it could have been disappointing, but there's always something. After a minute or so I noticed the tip of an odd-pinnate leaf hanging down from the shrub I was hiding in. One leaflet was red and dying the others were still green, and there was the barest thread of spiderweb clinging to them. The way they glowed, backlit by the sun, was a jewel in the day.

Continuing with yesterday's winter berry theme, since a big windstorm over a week ago, the ground under the holly tree has been littered with red berries. It's really quite pretty, almost like they were scattered there as decoration. And amazingly, the tree is still so full of berries, you can't tell it lost any at all.



And the cat thinks it's as good a place as any to take a bath!

One evening I'm driving to the farm past frozen stock ponds, and the next I'm walking around outside, a little too warm in my shirt sleeves, looking at the moon and pink sunset clouds through the bare winter trees.



And a few days later I'm photographing hard frost. Ah, winter in the South.

One nice thing about winter is that the variety and abundance of visual and aural input are reduced, so you can, for instance, more easily see that squirrel chattering in the hickory tree above you, or distinguish the tiny whistle of a single bird from the other calls.

Also? The evenings are amazingly peaceful.

"Chit... chit... chit... chit" from one tree.

"Chit" from another.

"Chit... chit... chit" in reply.

And that's the evening.