Keen eyes in a seemingly dull and colourless winter landscape will discover the pearls of beauty nature has prepared for us. I am always searching for the things hidden in the microcosmos of a snowy and icy fairyland, too small to see for the casual observer but large enough for the camera to capture.
Here are a few examples from a recent walk with Biene:
When the sky is gray and the mood is blue, our hearts and minds get a healthy boost at every bit of colour we discover walking over snow and ice. That happens every time the heavy cloud cover is rolled back, although just for a short moment, and the sun lights up the landscape from a blue sky. The rosehips, all dressed in red coats, are particularly pleasing to the winter-worn-out eyes Enjoy.
Unusually mild weather has been dominating our January weather. I recently spotted some beautiful droplets hanging from a rosehip twig on a hike at the Fauquier boat dock. Upon closer inspection, I discovered in the reflective lens a few fir trees inside the droplet. Enjoy.
A little bit of green (Hope) provided by the Ponderosa pine tree and a sprinkle of red (Love) with courtesy from the rose hips go a long way to cheer up our hearts on a soggy, rainy winter day in the Kootenays. Temperatures 10 degrees above normal in April are quite common but not in January in our neck of the woods. I took the two photos 30 minutes before dark. Enjoy.
This has so far been the mildest winter, since we moved here over forty years ago. In the early 1980′, we experienced massive snowfalls with snow piling up all the way to our kitchen window. In the extreme cold weather often lasting several weeks in a row, the lake would occasionally freeze over and our ferry barely managed to break the ice in the morning. It seems that such extreme weather is now part of the past. After a night of wet snow covering the ground with a white blanket, rain, quite heavy at times, returned to our area at the Arrow Lakes. When it let up a little, my wife and I went out for our daily walk equipped with our cameras hunting for rain drops. Here are the results. Enjoy!
As we are rapidly approaching Christmas, I would like to share a few photos with you where green and red are the dominant colours. Nature is at rest, all the flowers have disappeared from our fields, the bright and cheerful leaves have fallen to the ground, and here in our Northern climes, we are now looking at a bare landscape. Yet all our conifer trees except for the larches keep their verdant attire. For me, they are the symbol of hope in an over-commercialized world where nature is being exploited and trees are primarily viewed as material wealth. Old tradition has always kept nature in high esteem. Coming originally from Germany, I brought some of the Christmas customs to Canada that are not very well known here. One of them is the Advent wreath with its four candles symbolizing the four Sundays before Christmas. And a sprinkle of red provided by the rose hips goes well together with the green. This will be my last post in 2020. I will resume my blogging activity in the New Year. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
The Peter and Gertrud Klopp Family 