Winters Grip

With each  short day winters grip tightens

where once life thrived and spread

Is now so cold dark and dead

When later oak leaves danced upon a ripple past

Is now ice and snow that for months will last

I continue my watch of this small piece of life

and dream of the day when spring returns 

to this place... at last.

~JE Ted Gardner

These shots are taken at the same scene as the post "Adrift"

on November the 4th

Pinicola enucleator

Female Pine Grosbeaks

feeding on ornamental crab apples.

November New Moon

November winds exacerbate

October's dying breath,

With summer's life now ending

In such a chilling death.

But colours  spilling from the trees,

from every shrub and bush;

Does pale the essence of July,

And flowers vivid blush.

O, would that I could live my life

As April, May, and June

And lay myself down quietly

Beneath November's moon.

~Moses L. Hochstetler

Winter Sticks

Whats left of early summers Evening Primrose

"I want my garden to go on.

I cannot bear to think of it as a place

that may be tenanted only in the easy months.

I will not have it draped with Nature's dust sheets.

That is why I waged this battle for winter flowers..."

~Beverley Nichols

Sunset Bird in Winter

The west was getting out of gold,

The breath of air had died of cold,

  When shoeing home across the white,

I thought I saw a bird alight.

In summer when I passed the place

I had to stop and lift my face;

A bird with an angelic gift

Was singing in it sweet and swift.

No bird was singing in it now.

A single leaf was on a bough,

And that was all there was to see

In going twice around the tree.

From my advantage on a hill

I judged that such a crystal chill

was only adding frost to snow

As gilt to gold that wouldn't show.

A brush had left a crooked stroke

of what was either cloud or smoke

From north to south across the blue;

A piercing little star was through.

~Robert Frost

Owl and The Crow

A Snowy Owl appeared on a Church bell tower in midtown recently.

His arrival was not welcome to a pair of crows. For more than an hour

they dive bombed him...over and over.

Eventually he was annoyed enough an flew to another roof top.

Still the crows were persistent.

Eventually he flew of in search of silence.

  

Life

Disturbing?

Yes but such is the cycle of life.

What took this little fellow out

can not be determined

and yet life continues...

Stacked

Wood...

Father Knows Best

I asked to have my Pop do some hand modeling.

To which he agreed....Why?

because My Pop has hands with character

like his father before..my Gramps.

He made one request

"don't get my face"

I'm sorry Pop..I broke that rule.

The best image was the character in the hand and the face

I love! 

Sitta canadenis

Red Breasted Nuthatch

Or as my wife likes to say...

The Upside down Bird!

Adrift

Oak Leaves adrift in a pond

dappled colours abound

Their last display of elegance 

soon to be encased in ice

losing all relevance

for spring will bring a fresh display

to entice your thoughts adrift

~JE Ted Gardner

Detail

Its the detail in the tail and wings

of a Pine Siskin