What a lovely afternoon....

Spring is coming........

 
 
 

Winter Scenes

Winter is not really my favourite time of year, but I have to admit it's has it's own beauty.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Snow days...

Heavy slanting rain by the lakeshore....but look how pretty (although treacherous on the road) a few miles to the north!

I'm often amazed by the difference just a few short miles and some elevation can make to the climate around here at this time of year.

From various twitter, facebook, and blog postings from around the globe today, I think that snow is pretty much falling everywhere; flurries in Atlanta, snow in Michigan and in Windsor Ontario, not to mention the heavy dumping suffered by parts of Great Britain last week.   It would seem we here in Northumberland have gotten off pretty easy once again thanks to Lake Ontario's warming influence.  I expect we'll pay for this eventually.....

 
 
 

Random thoughts for today.....

Doing some banking for work, I was standing in line listening to the teller explaining to someone how the bank had been playing non-stop Christmas music for a solid week now, with of course no hope of relief for another 3.  She indicated that she was not sure how much longer she would enjoy listening to it.  As the line shuffled forward to the strains of 'Feliz Navidad', I mused about how this Christmas thing gets forced upon us at this at time of year whether we celebrate it or not, unless of course we opt for taking up residence in a cabin in the woods with no TV, radio or internet for the entire duration.   This not being possible for most of us, we must put up with it.  I'm not a big celebrant of Christmas at the best of times, and this year in particular, I am not really in the mood.  Then the song changed to 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas', the lyrics of which are poignant and melancholy for anybody....for one recently bereaved and heading into the holiday season, they're un-listenable.  I was tempted to put my fingers in my ears and chant 'la la la la la la!' or run out into the street howling.  Luckily, the man beside me provided a welcome distraction by initiating a conversation about the weather.  He explained that his friend in Scotland had been lamenting about a recent heavy dumping of snow.  It would appear that parts of England and Scotland got way, WAY more snow yesterday than we did here in Southern Ontario! 

However, here on the north shore of Lake Ontario, typically our early snowfalls don't amount to much, as summer warmth lingering in the Lake moderates our climate.  Yesterday we got some heavy wet stuff, during which I took a lunch-time walk and took a few photos.

 
 
 
 

 







Glorious Spring

There's a certain time of the afternoon when the sunlight on these spring days is so perfect, and everywhere you look, nature seems to be going out of it's way to be breath-takingly beautiful........

Yes, my blog seems to consist mainly of huge photographs.  No, I make no apology for this.  Enjoy the pictures!

 
 
 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

Springtime images, no words, just pictures.......

 
 

 
 

Winter into Spring

"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring." - George Santayana

Somehow it feels as though winter never really got going this year.  It made a couple of attempts to assert itself, the latest of which is already dissolving into mirrors of water and reflections.  Which is why the winter installment of my collection of seasonal photos with appropriate quotes is encompassing the very conception of spring too.  

So I begin with some crimson dogwood contrasting with it's burden of white, the shore of Lake Ontario crowded with winter waterfowl and frozen in the spell of a crisp, freezing day, and some rocks in Port Hope Harbor encased in ice. 

"There's a certain slant of light, winter afternoon that oppresses like the heft of cathedral tunes." - Author Unknown.

 

 And continue with photos from today, the beginning of March, that time of the year when winter is almost over but we can't quite call it spring.....it rather seems like it's own season; the sun is strong enough on days like today that a winter coat is too warm, the music of running water is everywhere, the soft twilights are beginning to lengthen. 

"The last fling of winter is over.  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell." - Donald Culross Peattie

'A strangely reflective, even melancholy day......'

'I saw old Autumn in the misty morn stand shadowless like silence, listening to silence.' - Thomas Hood

'A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand.  I think, I too, have known Autumn too long.' - e.e cummings

  

 

The Colours of Autumn

"I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility.  Spring shall plant and Autumn garner to the ends of time."  - Robert Browning

"There comes a time when Autumn asks, 'what have you been doing all summer?'"

"September fattens on vines.  Roses flake from the wall.  The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.  This is plenty.  This is more than enough.  - Geoffery Hill, September Song

"Then the fields lay shorn and stubbly, peacefully resigned in the last of the warmth as the cycle of growth and life curved downwards towards darkness and winter."

 

 

Summer

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time." - John Lubbock

"I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer.  My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music." - Violette Leduc

"Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." - Henry James