Stranger in a Plains Land ~ 3

Of all the things I have discovered here, the magic of frozen fog is my favorite.

As I was leaving my office one evening last winter, it was foggy, but the temperature was well below freezing. It was probably -20 degrees Fahrenheit. As the fog hit my face, it felt like teeny tiny ice petals brushing across my skin. The fog was frozen. It was such a strange sensation. The next morning was my initiation to the magic of frost.

The picture above was taken at my favorite playground in town--Sherlock Playground. It's all wood and castle-like. Very Scandinavian.

A friend of mine told me that what you see in these pictures is hoar frost, but I think some of it may actually be rime frost.

I am no meteorologist--though I am obsessed with weather--so I can't reliably tell the difference in types of frost. I do know that it's beautiful.

I can tolerate day after day of freezing weather to be rewarded with this. These pictures were all taken last year, but we had a pretty good frost day a few days ago. I just couldn't find my camera...

When the frost visited us a few days ago, I told the boy that the frost faerie had painted all the trees.

He asked, where did she go? Can we see her?

I said she was very tiny and maybe even invisible and probably very tired from all the frosting she had done.

I said we should be thankful that she visited us. 

We can add the frost faerie to the other lies I've been delighted to tell him.

Although these pictures are beautiful, they do not do the frost justice. I wish I had a better camera, or better editing skills. I always feel like I'm cheating if I mess with the image too much...

...so I feel compelled to confess that I played around with the color on the picture below. It was actually taken right outside of the Psychology building.

The picture below is one of the trees in our front yard. I think it's some kind of crab apple and the berries stay on through the entire winter. It's nice to have that little splash of color when you are surrounded by winter.

Admittedly, I feel lucky because we get many blue sky days and sunshine. Those clear, sunny days mess with my head because it looks warm and inviting inside, and then when I walk outside, the air screams GOTCHA and laughs.

I'd like to learn how to cook something with this fruit. It makes a terrible mess in the spring.
The berries litter the sidewalks, and then the tree blooms again.

Frost fingers...