Early cold morning. At 55 mph everything seemed shades of grey or brown - except for the evergreens. At any one of my favorite turnouts from Quincy to Greenville, details emerge. Still mostly green, grey and brown, but "colorful" in a sense. Comparing the "skin" of a maple (top photo) to that of oak can be an absorbing study. The very smooth bark of Big Leaf Maple, attractive in its own right, doesn't attract the variety of mosses and lichens typical of our California Black Oak. The Cat-o-Nine Tail at one of turnouts looks like it'll last through the winter. I keep watching for the explosion of seeds that'll happen eventually and the challenging photo opportunities it presents. The acorns in a puddle are beneath a thin layer of ice. The parent tree is on a cliff 20 feet above the puddle. The acorns seemed to be clustered in little groups in separate holes reminiscent of those made by sea urchins in tide pool rocks. The grassy icicles reminded me of the intermingling of icicles and stalactites on Dog Rock, a photo of which I posted here a few days ago. Last, the little Douglas-fir I've watched for four years now. It reminds me of a bonsai product in that it's growing out of a crack in a rock with very little soil and looks like it'll stay tiny forever. Already has cones but is only about three feet tall.
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