Category: A day in the life of a pond

The snow in the distance, across the pond, doesn’t look much different but up close you can see it’s been warm enough to clear away the snow on the grass near the house. The closer to the pond, the more snow, and the surface of the pond itself is covered with snow.

You can see the difference in the pond surface since Friday, even though the surface was completely frozen both days. I didn’t capture an earlier picture on the first, which showed the surface frozen in some spots and open water in others. It made an interesting pattern, so I’m hoping to see that effect again.

You may notice this is a slightly different angle than the first photo. There isn’t much physical distance between the two locations shown, but this view is facing almost due west through my windows and the other is southwesterly through the sliding glass doors.

This is the view out my back window. I love watching the pond as it changes through the seasons as well as the variety of wildlife it attracts. I’ve decided to chronicle it through one year, recording the changes as I experience them.

The photos will be in chronological order, but they won’t necessarily be posted on the day they are taken. Nor will I commit to blogging the pond every day. Some days, it changes or an interesting bird visits. Other days, not.

I’m also trying to identify earlier scattered blog posts and webpages and bring them here to consolidate. They’ll be republished with the original publication date, to keep them in some kind of order. This will be a long process and it’s not the most fascinating work, so it will take a while to bridge the gap from the earliest pages I could find, from 1996, and today.

A week ago, I was all “bah, humbug!” about spring. And why not? With all that white stuff on the ground, temps below freezing, and Michigan’s renowned gray skies, a change of season seemed much more than two weeks away.

I saw the light. The sunlight.

While there’s still a skim of ice on Lake Wrenaissance, it no longer holds snow and the ice has begun to creep away from the shore. We may reach 60 degrees (F) this weekend.

Daylight Savings Time has made the days light longer into the evening.

We saw a Canada Goose walking behind the deck. Not as thrilling as the first robin as a harbinger of spring, but the geese disappeared when the water froze and haven’t been around for the past few months. It’s so much nicer to see them flying north instead of south.

Yes, I believe in Spring.