There really wasn’t much of a winter this year but there were a few opportunities to get out and take pictures of scenes that weren’t relentlessly brown. Here’s a gallery containing a few of the things I saw this winter that didn’t quite make it into posts of their own for one reason or another.
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- The snow we got this year wasn't even enough to cover the grass.
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- This was the third year for the East Dodgeville Arena, bigger and better than ever. The ice was smooth and I shovelled off a big skating oval in addition to the usual rectangular rink. Unfortunately, good skating conditions lasted just one weekend.
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- For the most part, the lake wasn't frozen solid enough this year for there to be much motorized action on it. That's fine by us, but you could tell that the snowmobilers were going stir crazy by the way they hit the ice instantly and all day long as soon as the temperature stayed below -5 during the day. A couple of days later, it would be all melty again.
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- Snow tires, really only put to the test for two days this winter, carved through the fresh snow and left a trail of what I call "snow fries" behind.
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- I watched this pickup truck drive past our cottage, carrying the ATV to the public access at the end of our road. I then watched the people spend at least 15 minutes setting up the ramps, untying the ATV from the pickup bed, carefully bringing it down the ramps, and then loading up a bucket and tackle box, all just to drive maybe 50 metres out onto the frozen lake. They never went farther out than this, which really made me wonder why they bothered with the ATV at all. It would have been much faster and easier to make the 30-second walk.
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- A tiny little line of snow on a tree branch had an even tinier little hole right in the middle of it.
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- Our shoreline sometimes gets pushed up when the ice heaves on Rice Lake. This year, the wall of soil and rock came equipped with this ice window.
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- A whole lot of random ice crystals were embedded in the lake ice shortly after it froze over. If you look around the edges of the field, you can see some of the feather ice that I'd written about in a previous post.
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- A crack in the ice warns of (another) impending thaw. You can see some ice pushing up over the shore in the background.
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- Is that a bag of carrots in my pocket or are you just happy to see me? Risa gave a Christmas treat to the horses at Sunnybrook Stables.
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- Although I'm fully supportive of Risa's newfound interest in photography (and my cameras), it's harder to take pictures when there's always another photographer in the background.
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- A fallen tree forms a slippery bridge across the river in Ball's Mill Conservation Area. The river is only a few inches deep here, so it's probably easier to wade across.
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- This tree was so thoroughly destroyed by whatever beetle was boring under its bark that it's difficult to tell what it was. I don't think it was an ash tree.
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- In mid-February any other year, you'd only see the deep treads of heavy boots or large imprints of snowshoes on the trails. This year, sneakers seemed to be the footwear of choice.
