With the return of cold so fierce that yesterday, I just about wound up with frostbite in my thumb—and I was wearing fairly heavy gloves—all of the local ponds now are wearing a sheet of ice. In the shallows, the ice extends all the way down to the leaf litter and has created a wide variety of intriguing shapes. I'm not sure precisely which tree species this leaf in the center belongs to, but as I was scanning the still-liquid water below the ice blanket for signs of aquatic life, I noticed what I and my camera thought was a very pleasing tableaux of frozen forms. I hoped that none of them held the frost-killed forms of Marbled Salamander larvae, Fairy Shrimp, and water-bound insects that were caught napping and entombed. I hoped that further from the icy shore, the vernal pool citizenry found deeper-water refuge.