Morning light is often misty and magical near water.
A couple of leaves cling desperately, postponing joining their fallen brethren by hours - maybe a day or two.
I had several encounters with herons in the summer and fall of '07. I'll be writing more about them.
Cold winter sunsets often offer their own stark beauty.
Mrs. Cardinal shows she's hardly dowdy, even compared to her flashy mate. My apologies for the blurriness. We can blame shooting through a window and a klutzy photographer.
A few weeks ago, rising temperatures and a prolonged rain resulted in the release of an ice jam upstream. It drifted down, clobbering everything in its path and nearly overlapping this bridge. Benny wasn't overly pleased with all the ice OR the fact I had to stop and take pictures.
A little closer look at how high the ice floes rose.
21 comments:
Absolutely beautiful photos.. each and every one of them but the first one is my favourite. I love misty scenes. And I love the heron and its reflection. And I'd like to see more. Some of them look so.. so familiar! ;)
I like the photos Frank. Poor Benny looks cold!
i absolutely agree with hilary, the first one is my favourite too. i havent seen snow in years...
Thanks Hilary. I really like that one too. :)
Thanks Reb. Actually, that day wasn't very cold. The camera just caught Ben as he was about to sit down. Sure, he wasn't thrilled. But that was because I wanted him to sit still for a minute. :)
Come visit sometime Beth, between late December and mid-March. You'll find snow. :)
What beautiful photos, Frank. I strongly disagree with the statement that the photographer is klutzy. Each of the images contains a story.
Thank you for bringing me a glimpse of a world I haven't experienced for myself yet. :)
And Happy New Year!
Thanks Bhaswati and Happy New Year to you and yours! :)
Nice pictures, you’re quite the photographer. Now you can supply your own pictures with the articles and get paid twice as much. :)
-ov-
Sounds like a plan Othmar. :)
Thanks for stopping by.
Oooo, those are so great! I especially love the first one and the sunset....and the bird on the rock in the water. Absolutely gorgeous.
Thanks Jessi. :)
Your photos are always so beautiful. I wish that my parents still owned their bush property in Longwood East, then I could compete with scenery!
I wish they did too Stace! I'd love to see the pics you have in mind. :)
You'll just have to imagine... we lived in pretty much the middle of nowhere. Dirt roads, half an hour's drive from the nearest town. Our driveway was about a kilometre long, and wound between two paddocks... when I was very young they were filled with bracken, but progressively we got rid of that and had stock grazing there (generally sheep, and our two donkeys [Pepsi and Coke, don't ask me why]). Closer to the house, mum's domain began: gardens! God, my mum is such a gardener. I couldn't begin to tell you the types of trees and flowers she had, but it made a beautiful effect. I believe she tried mostly to plant natives, but there was quite a bit that wasn't native too. Down at the house, we had a fernery with a fountain, and then the front lawn... then a big steep slope down towards the bush paddocks. Yes, the bush, the REAL bush, what Americans think Australia is like, that's where I grew up. I used to climb through the fence and walk down the tracks made by kangaroos and rabbits, and there was a stream I used to sit by quite often... it only ran in winter, because summer always meant drought and carting water from town for anybody without big tanks. We had tanks, our neighbours had to cart water. I never got to their place by road, or any of our neighbours really, it was quicker and easier to go cross-country... oh man, I'm a little tipsy so I have no idea if this makes any sense. I used to look out my bedroom window and see a mob of 30 kangaroos grazing in the orchard. We had an early warning system for snakes: the Labrador barked madly at them until somebody came out with a shovel and cut their heads off. We had no fences down the bush, to this day I have no idea what was on our property and what belonged to our neighbours. So I'd wander for miles, everywhere... we had our landmarks with our own special names. Tyson's Terrible Tree was the tree on such an angle that it was almost parallel with the ground, which Tyson (a neighbour's kid) somehow managed to get stuck in while climbing. Death Rock was the big rock my brother fell off and sprained his ankle quite badly.
I was meant to be describing it, wasn't I? I think it defies description. I'm sorry. Maybe when I'm sober I'll try again...
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=Longwood+East,+Victoria,+Australia&ie=UTF8&ll=-36.856746,145.455133&spn=0.004335,0.010042&t=h&z=17&iwloc=addr&om=1
I hope that works. The house in the middle is where I used to live. Gosh it's dry there in that picture...
Little Ben is posing! And he's totally color coordinated with the scenery. How did you do that?
It makes perfect sense and sounds near-idyllic to me Stace. (Except for being too dry for much fishing.) ;)
I pasted the link and it worked. Very Nifty. Thanks. :)
Kappa, it was skill of course. And intelligence, bravery, and - what the heck - good looks too!
Maybe a smidge of luck.... ;)
My dad did once stock one of the dams with trout... all of a sudden we had a heron epidemic, and all the trout were gone. Weird... hehe
All wild critters are such wonderful opportunists aren't they? Gotta be I suppose. It's a key survival tactic. :)
I don't see my previous comment, hmmm? Perhaps I only thunk I wrote one? Anyway, I absolutely love, love, love the snowy bridge and JRT!
dad im srry but in the ben pic there of the over flowed bridge area..looks like hes taking a poop :P haaha nice way to brake a thing called personal space, or time alone :P
No, #2, he wasn't doing a #2. He was about to sit down, almost patiently.
:P
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