Asakiyume mita

This past week gave us plenty of cold days for frozen bubbles. I blew one beautiful big one that floated up past my neighbor's pussy willow tree and eventually snagged in the upper branches of my apple tree:



(The black blob in the sky is a crow)



Tangled up



One day I decided to walk a birthday card to the post office--to get there I chose a path along trails and through the woods. There were many animal tracks. This photo is from a different day, but it gives the sense of the busy traffic:



Eventually I emerged from the woods, patted my pocket, and--oh no! No birthday card! It had come out at some point! So I turned around and retraced my steps and retrieved it from beneath a pine tree. I mentioned this on Twitter, and the Healing Angel responded:

Meanwhile, a very lonely pine tree droops when it realises that this courier was not for it, and that it will have to wait still longer for the letter it anticipates

OMG blood of my blood, soul of my soul.

I saw the blue jays' exhaled breath, rising from their nostrils, as they carried off the peanuts I put out for them. Their internal furnaces are hotter than humans', around 105F (40.5C)--more than 120 degrees hotter (in Fahrenheit) than the outside temperature, so it's no wonder it was visible in curling plumes in the cold air. Little dragons.

I blew some soap bubbles and watched them freeze. This one got caught on the snow mound, and its deflated back rose and fell and rose and fell in slight breeze, as if it, too, were breathing. A very thin-skinned, tiny being.



Now maybe you're wondering if I'll ever talk about something other than the weather. I do have other thoughts!

Press A if you would like my thoughts on Sleepy Hollow--better yet, tell me yours.
Press B if you would like some hazy realizations about writing--or share yours!
( and here is one of them, the one I've been mulling over most recently )

Press C if you would like a status update on my own writing--or tell me how yours is going (or your other pleasurable creative activity, if not writing).
( it's thoughts like the following that make me wonder if this project is doomed, or just different )

Friends know what that means--frozen soap bubbles!

One problem is that the bubble fluid freezes right on the stick:



Another, more major problem is that I can't both be blowing the bubbles and taking the photos, not easily or well, anyway, and not while not getting frostbite. Also, I just am not that clever a photographer. Enough of the protestations. Here is my best attempt to show how the frost spreads over the bubble:

see the mottled look? Each is a frost flower


Sometimes, though, they freeze clear:



In this fragment, snagged on a twig, you can see a star here and there in the nebula



( the smash-ups can be pretty )

( beginning to deflate )

( Glinda's chariot )