Minnesota winter sunrise

 

 

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

  Yoda

Mindful Writing Day 2012 and Skywatch Friday

Beyond a sheet of onyx lake water, lit here and there by the moon, ducks muttered. Shearing wings above me as they settled their arguments.

Were ducks awake that early under the dock?

I think it was the drowsy moon laughing at my eavesdropping.

 What I heard on a new day over the lake linked to

Skywatch Friday

Mindful Writing Day

 



 

peace like October

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.  J.R.R. Tolkien

On misty Owasso Lake one morning geese could swim undisturbed by fishermen, only shot by a camera. More beauty at Skywatch Friday.

life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

all in one day in Minnesota. Linking these random shots to Skywatch Friday.

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”

John F. Kennedy

rosy** colored dawn

Behold this morning's sky as the sun rose above the lake near us. Pink was the color today!

Rosy comes from the Latin 'roseus' meaning rosy or pink. Incidentally the poet Lucretius used rosy to describe the dawn in his six book epic On the Nature of Things [De Rerum Natura] written in the first century BC. 

I'm happy to include this Minnesota dawn with all the other skies posted at Skywatch Friday.

note to self: look up from the computer once in awhile!

              One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare. Mark Twain

I was working on the computer early one morning this week when I was blinded by this gorgeous sunrise You catch a glimpse of the lake near us in the first picture, both taken from the frosty deck.

It occurred to me that even if I don't see beauty as it is happening, it is still happened.

Elementary, my dear.                     

Stop by Skywatch Friday for more breathtaking sky views.

stand tall and reserve your sap

I caught this sunrise over Owasso Lake early last month. The lake was covered with snow and likely slowly freezing underneath. In December the lake still hasn't completely frozen, much to the dismay of the ice fishermen. The trees are now completely bare, all the better to hear the message below:

Message on the Winter Air

Long shadows on blue snow

Warm sun stepping around trees

Life’s mysterious light and dark.

Trees standing tall

Uncovered faces in the wind

Snow collecting in the cleft of boughs

Sap deeply stored.

Feetless birds, round as tennis balls

Perched facing the warming sun

Random song--

Reassuring their own kind

Reaching limb to limb,

Barren bark remembers melting snow

Turns to buds in spring.

Stand tall, reserve sap,

Accept visitors,

Wrap the bird song like a scarf .

See more unique sky views @ Skywatch Friday.

I begin just where I left off. . .

early winter's brooding sky brim full with dirty cotton clouds

 shooting colors from the east as the curtain lifts over the lake

and you know how I feel about silhouettes of trees 

I'm linking this glimpse of daylight to Skywatch Friday with its many sky views.

'I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off.' 

Willa Cather

Skywatch Friday: take it easy

Behold, my kinda' sky: blue, calm, nicely tinting the lake below it.  September on one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes has a melancholy aspect that maybe only I can see, but. . .

Ernest Hemingway mentions the contrast between spring and fall he experienced in Paris in   

 A Moveable Feast:

With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This is the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen...

Visit more skies @ Skywatch Friday, after which I hope you'll set down your burdens and enjoy the Labor Day weekend with my best wishes!

 Same gate but two different seasons,

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 months apart from each other. Open more gates at ABC Wednesday here.

Be nice to nerds.

Chances are you'll end up working for one.

 Bill Gates

like a rock

This morning I was clocked on the head by a big pointy rock--instead of the usual smooth and warm stones I've been collecting.
Rounding the bend around the lake I saw two little creatures, seemingly in repose at the edge of the road. By the time I reached them and got my wits about me I realized that they were two very young racoons both hit by a car, likely following mom or dad back from a midnight drink in the lake.
Heartbreaking. indelible. image.

Sighing, I have thrown this rock stone back in Owasso Lake. 

Factoid: Spring makes people nuts!

Late spring weather can be mercurial, and nowhere is that more evident than when Minnesota tries to leave winter behind. Yesterday it snowed several inches but by late afternoon this was the sky I saw near my house when I walked to the lake. The birds were hysterical and a hoodie was warm enough. By the time I got back up the hill to my house the sky had yet another big bank of clouds moving through. Then they morphed into an ice storm after dinner. Really keeps us on our toes! More skies from just about everywhere, here.

"April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts. "
— Barbara Kingsolver

me, standing on my head

In an effort to convince myself that spring will come, I pulled this out of the archives so I can remember what a blue sky looks like. . .even if it is turned upside down. Note the reflection in the lake made by the huge television tower, middle, look left.

Yes, I am indeed grasping for straws!

Visit Skywatch Friday to see more skies, probably right side up.

What's a mother to do?

As we hunker down for a 11-17 inch snowstorm I thought it might lighten the forecast by remembering a kinder and warmer time last summer, when a mother duck tried to send her ducklings on the straight and narrow. Metaphors, all.
See more @ Camera Critters.

Skywatch Friday, or off the beaten path

There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been! Percy Bysshe Shelley Some sky views in our new abode: Above is the same path I walk each week but now emblazoned by autumn. Below is the view of the lake from our apartment, looking past our neighbor's deck to Lake Owasso and a cloudy September day.
When I just can't open another packed box, I remember that there is a truth to be found whenever I randomly look up at the sky.

Rest? Camaraderie? Harmony? At any rate, these three birds have the right idea.

See more sky views from all over our dear planet at Skywatch Friday.

peaceful morning: Skywatch Friday

This gorgeous sunrise one morning caused me to stop on the road next to Owasso Lake and wonder. . .about many things, including the stark beauty of subzero temperatures.

Visit more beauty at Skywatch Friday.

SkyWatch Friday--just another day in Minnesota

Owasso Lake is frozen solid, allowing cars, snowmobiles and people in boots to cross, set up fish houses, let their pets run, etc. This day the sun was so bright in a perfect blue sky. I thought the clouds were a true reflection of the linear tracks in the snow.
See more sky views at Skywatch Friday.

'nothin but blue skies'

caveat: all I do is complain about the weather. It appears that we have two choices here in the Twin Cities: cold and clear blue skies or warm[er], foggy and gray.

So, today dawned in the first category and I was itching to take a long walk along the lake. On my way home I heard familiar Robin sounds right above me. He was basking in the sun so didn't mind me taking his photo. Oh joy! Is there a more beautiful sound than bird song in the dead of winter?

Find more happiness in feathers or fur @ Camera Critters.

x marks the spot

Another sunrise over Owasso Lake taken last Saturday. The contrail reminded me of one of Thor's lightning rods cutting through the clouds. You can also see how frozen the lake is becoming. Soon the ice-fishing houses will be popping up. Winter begins!
See more seasonal skies at Skywatch Friday.

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