Ice garden
I managed to get out alone today for a brief jaunt, and I came home with a harvest of interesting images: a Winter Wren skulking through a tangle of exposed tree roots, two dead Canada Geese locked in the ice, a squadron of live Mallards swimming in the creek against the current, a newborn calf that didn't survive a winter's night. But this photo, an ice-sculpture by a puddle on the side of the road, struck me as the best. It's above freezing for a change, and there's liquid water in the landscape. When cars drive through the puddle, they send the water towards the roadside shrubs that gradually accumulate a thick layer of mud-tinged ice. The result is an earth-toned ice garden.