Inside the Little Plastic Castle

The warnings were dire, but so far we've only had 4-5 inches on the ground. The snow is very heavy and wet and it's barely freezing. That's good news on the street, where it rapidly melts. It's sad news in the backyard, where thick snow brought down three branches on our oldest pine tree, which blocked the street behind our house. Thank heavens for neighbors with chainsaws.

Earlier in the day, MyGuy and Bella went exploring on the bike path. It's a tunnel of white: snow covers the path itself, all the vegetation on the sides, and weighs down the branches of the trees and bushes. Since our black mutt Bella is certain there's something exciting just ahead, her leash is stretching forward into the future.

( click for pic )

Final photo from my pontoon boat adventures back in September.

Ten minutes after sunset, the black downtown skyline is highlighted by red, orange, yellow streaks quickly fading into a deep blue sky. The left-most passenger holds up a smartphone camera to capture a picture much like this one.

( Read more... )

The first annual Cloud Appreciation has been delightful. The skies over southcentral Wisconsin filled with clouds small and large, wispy and chunky, traveling all the points of the compass. This afternoon we drove to Pope Farm Conservancy, a high spot overlooking the lakes. 360° of clouds: white, gray, frond-y, zooming.

( Admiring north western horizon )

Foregrounded by a fieldstone wall, overhead a thick gray cloud drifts into more than 20 white/gray puffs over rolling hills with dark green trees and drying grasses.

As hoped, folks from around the planet contributed to the public exhibit. My favorite for this hour is from John Montague, shooting in the Salisbury Plain of South Georgia Island in the Scotia Sea (southern edge of the South Atlantic)

( Preacher Penguin Leads the Flock )

Hundreds of tightly-packed penguins face us, while we see the back of one penguin, arms out like a conductor. The horizon is softened by a warm fuzzy "fog bow," showing the top eighth of a circle, rising from the treeless tundra.

I'm loving my membership in the Cloud Appreciation Society, which includes the educational "cloud a day" email newsletter. And because it's a teaching tool that highlights the distinctive elements of each cloud, the main text makes for an excellent image description. I find this approach much smoother than creating a separate image description bracketed away from the body of text.

Today's text:

Have you ever seen the state flag for Colorado, US? Well you have now, according to Kristen Erekson (Member 56,298). This formation of Cirrocumulus clouds producing an optical effect around the Sun known as a corona was spotted over Colorado by Kristen’s friend Christi Romney. It gives a pretty good impression of the flag’s design: a big red C around a yellow disc over a backdrop of white and dark blue. In Christi’s celestial tribute, the red C is formed by the iridescent colours of the corona, caused by the scattering of light by the tiny water droplets in the Cirrocumulus. The flag’s white and blue are provided by the contrast between cloud and sky, while its yellow disc comes thanks to the Sun. No need to look up what the flag looks like – you've as good as seen it already.

Today's image inside the cut.

( Read more... )

And this post has three of them!

I've been spending more time on my beadwork and less time writing posts.

It's the very best time of the year: temperatures between 50 - 65°F (10 - 19° C) with strong breezes. A few overnight frosts have beat back the biting bugs. Our city recently permitted (leashed) dogs in most of the parks, so we've been exploring many of them.

These shots are from the Capitol Springs Dog Park (and Disc Golf Course). The tatters of Hurricane Delta had finally reached us up here in the Northcentral Midwest.

• Silky ruffles of clouds define the edge of a front in a deep blue sky above a drying prairie.

( admire within )

• Eight minutes later. Half the sky is now almost clear, the other half with silky ripples of low white clouds.

( silky! )

• Twenty minutes later. Pale blue sky hosts low clouds to the horizon which combine fluffy and about-to-rain over a late-fall prairie with brown stalks. (The rain never hit us.)

( you know what to do )

A great day to hang by Lake Monona

Puffy clouds piled high above a small lake wind-ruffled to a gray green. Near shore features tall prairie flowers, human-height scrubby bushes, and a very weather-beaten oak -- all frame the fifteen-story and smaller buildings on the far shore (our State Capitol pokes up among them).

( image here )

• The basic, eternal joys of Rhinelander: the clear cold lake ringed with conifers and birches. Eagles and loons and deer and (maybe) a cougar. Excellent, copious simple food. Constant reading except when we're napping or strolling around outdoors. MyGuy takes Lucy out on the rails-to-trails, where she frantically follows new smells. Barb and I (when awake) discuss what's happened the previous year, with commentary informed by our forty-year friendship.


• Fate sent me a remission to coincide with my vacation! One day I walked in town, swam, and still was able to make dinner. This is more than twice what I'm accustomed to accomplishing, and I was truly thrilled. Just realized there was a direct pain/fatigue tradeoff. Still worth it.

( Five More Lovely Things )