Glazed Trees

 In a post Gavin over at Baseball Card Breakdown made last night, he shared a few pictures of the aftermath of an ice storm that his area over on the Pacific Northwest.

One of them was (third picture from the bottom), was a picture of a frozen branch.

I left a comment stating I loved seeing pictures like that. The original comment was a lot longer but halfway through I decided to turn it into the post you're reading now.

A few years ago when I was just taking a walk I noticed something similar had happened to some foliage I happened to walk passed. I thought it was one of the prettiest things ever. 

I know that these are just frozen but a mix of being in a chemically altered state and the winter cold made me think these were glazed.

I'm definitely not the first to notice how cool this looks and I won't be the last either. There's something neat about seeing leaves like this even though I'm pretty sure the leaves themselves are having a really rough time in there.

For one thing you don't associate snowy winter with lots of luscious green. There are some trees that still have their green leaves even in the winter but those are usually like larches. The kind of trees that have pine leaves and thick bark. Most of the other trees went bare in the autumn months when the temperature dropped.

Like whatever was on this branch. Even seeing a branch like this is cool too.

There's also something about how this is a fleeting and a real "moment in time" kind of thing.

Like everything you're seeing is only temporary. The temperature that's low enough that the ice exists, the way the ice is coating the whole thing, the state of the branch as is, all of this could be like this today and look completely different tomorrow.

I don't know, maybe it was just because I was high but I thought it was one of those "oh shit, take a picture now, who knows when you'll see something like this again?!" moments.

In more colder climates this is probably a lot more common and probably a regular occurrence. But in the past few years I've lived just outside New York City where the winters went from a lot of snow to a lot of rain. Whether or not the temperature drops shortly after the rain enough to where things freeze like this is kind of 50/50. Although in my own neck of the woods it was more like 10/90.

Maybe I just have bad luck with frozen foliage.

Still, that doesn't change how these are still just a transient state to be appreciated in the moment and preserved in photographs to be viewed later long after the ice melts and the branches get to breathe again.

That's one of those beautiful temporary things mother nature loves providing.

Intentionally blurry

I'd prefer frozen foliage over everything being buried under snow at least.

At least the glazed trees look nice, this snow just turns into gray sludge that never melts and makes it harder to walk on sidewalks and get out of motor vehicles.

Gotta take the good with the bad though I guess.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.