Hoar Frost Makes For A Lacy Landscape

On Monday while I was out driving in southern Cuyahoga County, I saw some very heavy hoar frost coating the trees where I-271 crosses over the Tinkers Creek/Bedford Reservation area. The sky was also a clear, bright blue, and the effect seeing the thick white frost on the trees against the blue of the sky was breathtaking. I had my small camera with me, but the freeway is not the wisest place to stop to take a picture. I settled for another area along the way to my destination which passed by the entrance to Bedford Reservation and was able to snap this picture of some of the trees. (It really doesn’t do it justice, as the frost wasn’t as thick as it was near the freeway. )



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Full Moon January 29, 2010 “Wolf” Moon

The full moon on January 29, 2010 was reported to be the largest and brightest full moon of the year. The size of the moon itself hadn’t changed, of course. The moon’s non-circular orbit put it at its closest to the earth for 2010. (It will actually reach the closest perigee for 2010 at 4:04 a.m. ET Saturday.) Despite the fact that temperatures were nearing the single digits, we went out into the yard to take a few pictures in the very bright moonlight, a sort of companion to the photos of the full moon and Mars that I took earlier in the day.Combined with the snow, it made for a very bright scene.

January's full moon is also called the wolf moon, from Native Americans who associated the January full moon with wolves howling in the cold. What was odd is that while we were outside taking pictures, we heard many dogs barking and howling in the distance.

Mars was also nearby in the sky, and despite the fact that some high clouds were moving in, the planet made a brief appearance in one of the photographs. It's that tiny dot of light off to the left of the first photograph, near the tree top. (Click on any photo for a larger size.)






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Full Moon and Mars, Clouds and Cold

It got into the single digits during the night, and there were some clouds. But, with the full Moon, and with Mars lurking nearby, it was hard to resist going out at 5:30 AM to try to catch a picture. The bright Moon gave the clouds a strange colored glow, almost a faint, pastel rainbow effect. Here are a few pictures; in one of them, you can see the faint dot of Mars in the upper portion of the picture in the gap in the clouds.





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My Cleveland “Sketchbook”

The weather and constant gray skies in January in northeast Ohio makes it difficult to find anything decent to photograph. So instead, I dug into my “archives” and pulled out some photo “sketches” of Cleveland that I’ve been working on in my spare time - and I finally finished it. Enjoy!



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Lake-Effected and Snow-Belted

November and December gave us only scant snowfall totals as a few big snowstorms and the normal Lake Erie snow machine had missed our area of northeast Ohio. But so far this January, it seems the lake has turned on the switch full throttle. Those of us living in the primary “snow belt,” which is known for its heavy snowfalls, are finally making up this week for what we missed this season.

It’s hard to take a photo in the snow without it looking like a black and white photo, so when I took my snowy walk around the yard, I tried to capture even the slightest bit of color I could find. There wasn’t much. I did manage to catch a large fox squirrel mid-leap as it was running for cover, although the heavy snowfall at the time makes him look a little blurry.









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A Northern Cardinal Braves the Snow

We are on the western edge of the large snowstorm that is coming up the east coast, and all we are seeing right now is a light, but very wet, snow. Here is a photo of a female northern cardinal that decided to come out and brave the snow.




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A Smiling Fox Squirrel

In our city, I swear there are as many fox squirrels as there are people. We have several squirrels that are frequent visitors to our backyard. While we have a squirrel-proof bird feeder, it doesn’t stop the squirrels from coming around to get the seed which drops onto the ground.

I had just started to fill the feeder when a squirrel came up and sat on a branch right above me, I swear it was smiling at me, seemingly hoping that I would drop the entire cup of feed right onto the ground. He/she was kind enough to pose for a photo, sporting that same grin. How could I not “accidentally” drop some feed after that?





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