WiseAcre Gardens

Join Green Thumb Sundays

Snow and bitter cold today. So over the river and through the woods - you got to be kidding me.

I had no plans on going out today. I had enough keeping the home fires burning and the house warm. But things never go as planned and I had to go out. As usual I took my camera and got a few shots.

Goldenrod under snow.

Cattails on the river’s edge

Ligularia “snowcone’

An elephant out of it’s element

I had to go to my daughter’s. Her furnace stopped and I went over to get it started again. The silver lining was actually getting my driveway plowed. She paid someone to do it for us. We’re too frugal cheap to do anything but shovel the driveway ourselves. I’m also lazy and perfectly willing to wait and let it melt. All I can say is I’m glad she got stuck in the driveway when she stopped by.

Old Man Winter delivered snow, freezing rain and more snow to the north country on a day I had to drive through the Adirondack Mountains. I estimated the round trip to Albany was going to take at least 12 hours with poor road conditions. The good news - road conditions proved to be good after an hours travel time. The bad news - I still didn’t stop for photo ops since it’s still a 9 hour round trip. The idea of spending so much time driving didn’t inspire me to think about stopping to take photos. But the photo bug in me was eating at my conscience so at Long Lake I took out the camera and took a drive by shot.

I didn’t get the bug again until I got through the mountains and hit the Northway (Interstate 87). At 65 mph I didn’t expect much but the photos are halfway decent.

These photos were taken about 70 miles north of Albany.

I put the camera away since traffic was now picking up and it would only get heavier as I headed south. Only on my return did I once again start snapping shots as I drove. I wanted to stop on Interstate 90 to get a night shot of Albany across the Hudson River but passed up that idea and only took another drive by shot. I should have stopped. All I got was a blur and didn’t get the glow in the sky over the city that I wanted to capture.

I didn’t try again until I got back to the Adirondack ‘trails’. These are shots through the windshield of a typical road through the mountains.

Caution: more curves than you imagine

I did stop once and try to take a photo in pitch black. I had to edit the shot in order to see anything.

Desktop Background

I was beginning to see green eye monsters by the time I was less than an hour from home.

At the end of the road was the best sight of all.

Even if my wife didn’t shovel the driveway.

This post is mainly for the birds.

Pookey and I found more than that but it’s best to keep somewhat focused on one subject. We begin our walk following a deer trail in woods. This is just a back road compared to other trails the deer have made in the area.

Still it’s best to stay off the road. We don’t need to get run over.

Further along we followed a tractor path through some cedar woods.

The trimmed - pruned look is from deer browsing. Cedar is the main forage for deer in the winter.

After following the tractor path downhill for a while we cut through some open woods. At this point we were at least a 3/4 mile from from the nearest house and found a sign feral children must be living nearby.

We got out of there quickly afraid we’d be tagged and having to be ‘it’ for the rest of the day. (neither of us run fast any longer)

It wasn’t long before we finally reached the Grasse River. We knew long before we got there what we would find. Geese feel no need to remain silent.

I never got a chance to sneak up on them. Pookey had to rush to the riverbank and see what was making all that noise. Needless to say the geese just swam to the other side and I had to rely on the zoom lens on the camera to get closer.

‘oh yea, I got away from a dog with teeth this big’

Two Faced Goose - at least from a distance it looked that way.

I bet this one has a hard time deciding whether it’s coming or going.

It can eat twice as fast as the others but it faces certain doom due to spontaneous explosion.

I didn’t edit the photo. The geese were so far away they just blended into one another.

On the way back we ran across a couple more birds. I never got a chance to shoot the woodpecker. Pookey kept chasing it but while she was busy I spotted a turkey hiding in a hedgerow on the other side of a hayfield.

The only image available to use as desktop wallpaper is a real turkey. Click the pic for the larger size