Winter's Last Gasp (I hope!)

 Oh man, it just doesn't get much worse than this: sleet and slush and freezing rain that soaks through your coat.  And now (tonight) the wind has started to roar through the ice-dripping trees.
I hope the weather improves by the weekend, when I'm planning to attend a women's retreat at Pyramid Lake in the Adirondacks.  I hear predictions for over a foot of new snow up there, but at least it should be snow, not sleet and slush and freezing rain.  Or so I hope.

Yes, we are certainly growing weary of winter, but I was reminded today of some of winter's more welcome charms when a friend sent me the following photos of patterns in ice.   They were taken by Ray Bouchard, who was one of our party of five exploring the tupelo swamp in the Palmertown Mountains on Saturday.  Readers can scroll down to my last blogpost to read my account of our adventure.  I included there a photo of a frozen puddle,  covered with maybe 8 incles of glass-clear ice containing marvelous fissures and bubble traces.  Well, Ray was equally enchanted by that puddle (as well as by the tupelos), so he returned to the site this week, toting his camera and tripod, and took these beautiful photos of that intriguing ice.  I share them with his permission.