What I Saw This Morning

The apple tree in the barnyard was sparkling with frost.   The donkeys and sheep are chewing on the thin branches that hang low enough for them to reach.  So the tips of the tree closest to the ground are a deep reddish brown, compared to the gray bark that covers the rest of it.

A stand of wool on one of those branches helped create a meandering stream of ice crystals almost too small to see with the naked eye.   It made me feel a little bit special to have witnessed it.

Then there were the hoof prints.

One of our Amish neighbors came by in their horse-drawn cart and left behind some hoof prints in the snow.   I saw the unusual oval of ice, with hay-like hair sticking out from it.  Just a step away was the negative space in the snow where it originated.

And next to that impression was another.  But this one was filled in with dried hydrangea flower that blew off the bush in my shade garden.

I did move the icy hoof clot (the positive to the impressions negative) closer to the two hoof prints to take this picture.

And this last photo,  well I can’t say what it is.  A mistake for sure.

I found it on my iPhone when I got back into the house after feeding the animals.  I was going to just delete it, but then I saw beauty in the shapes and colors. So I did a little editing and came up with this bright and colorful abstract on this very gray morning.