Winter Sky Photos

I know I said my next post would be on the Japanese Maples, but early this morning, after our electricity went out, I looked out of the back window and just had to run and get my camera. We sometimes get weird light before a storm in the summer, but this is February. The sun was just coming over the hill to the east, surprising in itself since we've seen so little of it lately, and just lit up the first pasture, accented by the quite dark sky to the west. Very briefly, before I got the photos taken, there was a red/pink line across the dark sky. Sorry I didn't get that too.

To keep this botanical, this first one is of the barn and the Salix irrorata. From what I've read, this is often just a multistemmed shrub, but that on occasion it can be single stemmed and make a rather nice tree. That's what we have. The leaves are silvery and before a thunderstorm, especially if there is wind, it just shimmers. This was almost as good.
Another view where you can see a bit of the pasture. For those who know the gardens, this is the pasture that is on the other side of the creek in the very back.

This is looking up the hill to the left as you look towards the back barn. These are very, very, green pines, but in the weird light, they were quite yellow.

Another view of the pines.

More of the field.

A general view with the peony beds, the barn, the Salix, pasture and sky. The whole thing only lasted at most 10 minutes, but was a nice distraction from our lack of electricity. Turned out that a tree had fallen on a line just down the road and it was back on in less than 2 hours; a bit of a record since we usually are out for at least 3 hours. Breakfast cooked on the woodstove tasted good, though, for a change.

Barring some other strange weather event, I'll be back soon with my post on Japanese Maples.

Jane