Winter???

Do you like my "snowflake"?

We sure haven't seen many of the real variety - this one is actually a photo of a tree branch that has been altered with a kaleidoscope effect. It's an interesting little program, you just never know what will pop out.

I know we're not the only area of the world experiencing an abnormal winter, but I'm losing patience with our lack of real winter!

This is the greyest winter I've ever experienced on Mackinac, I guess I'm just spoiled - usually we have bright blue,  clear days or it's snowing and I enjoy either one of those. But this grey sullenness is just too depressing.

I decided to continue with my 365 Project and it's making it tough to capture much that's interesting, but here's a few I hope you'll enjoy.

Abstract ice in the harbor:

A couple taken on a rare sunny day, enhanced by the dusting of snow that arrived in the night:

I found these HUGE ice crystals one morning; I'm sure it was quite amusing to see me trying take these against a dark background (I'm not much of a contortionist). I really didn't manage to capture the incredible beauty of these:

There is ice out in the Straits; the ferry had to be freed from the ice by the Coast Guard last week and has now stopped until spring. I found this gorgeous blue ice piled up on shore. The pile is over eight feet tall and the individual slabs are about 10" thick:

We can't control the weather obviously, so we just need to make the best of it - the relatively warm weather IS reducing our heating bills after all!