Coming this afternoon: EVIDENCE
Full commentary on these photos will be posted this evening. For now, let me just say that we had a significant snow drop last night, thus today's title. The other images were captured just before the storm. Further commentary as well as corrections on the orientation of some pics will happen tonight. Exciting time of year.
Later in the day: Turns out two of the snow photos were taken around 6:30 a.m. today, and two were taken at 5:30 p.m. Can you tell which are which? Amazing change! The moss photo reminds me of how ineffective high school biology class can be. I remember being taught about the alternation of generations, sexual to asexual, and so on, with regard to mosses. However, in the years following high school biology, I never observed this in my back yard - that is, I never paid attention. There was lots of moss around, but all I cared about was that it was pretty, and green, and soft. When relatively dry, it was comfortable to lie on. However, the amazing reproductive life cycle never caught my eye until years later when I took botany in college. This patch was near a popular swimming hole west of Quincy known as Lovers' Leap. The gametophyte generation is a lush green, and the brownish sporophytes tower above them. Now if this photo had been in my high school textbook instead of that boring line drawing, maybe I would have gone out looking for them.
The photos of the butterfly on a willow show my obsession. The flowering of the willow got my attention initially, then the butterfly appeared. He/she was so active and the back-lighting was so beautiful, I could have watched it for hours. As it is, I took only about 20 photos and saved the best ten. The lichens on the tree trunk are another subject I never tire of. We saw lots of lichens on rocks on our recent Table Mountain trip. My son and I have taken to looking more closely to see how many species we can spot in one small place. We've seen as many as 9 in one square foot of rock surface, and up to 5 or 6 on a small area of tree bark. As I've mentioned earlier on the blog, one of the earliest discoverers of what a lichen actually is was Beatrix Potter, now known more for her children's stories about a rabbit. She was actually a great scientist whose career was short-circuited by male chauvinists who wouldn't let her into the "club."
Finally, the fact that the snow melted so fast today makes me optimistic that I'll be photographing wildflowers and insects again soon - like maybe tomorrow!
[Don't forget - you can click on any photo to get a full-screen view.]
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