First Freeze

— Texas is truly a mixed bag when it comes to weather. One day we are in shorts and t-shirts, and the next day we experience a freeze. That was the case for the first couple of days in January 2022. The temperature difference from Friday to Saturday was 30 degrees Fahrenheit or 17 degrees Celsius. Sometimes these temperature changes are gradual, but what happened last night was sudden and quite strong. It was a hard freeze for our local area in Austin.

The photo you see above is what happened to our Blue Plumbago plants in our front yard. Earlier in December, everything was blooming because of the warmer temperatures. I was even able to observe a lot of pollinators doing their job. The photo below, for example, is the same plant two days before Christmas 2021.

I don’t recall such an early hard freeze in recent years. Even the birdbath and water fountain we have in the backyard had plenty of ice in and around them. Seeing what happened and coupling that with a photo assignment for a class I am taking, I went to the backyard to do some macro shots. It is always fascinating to take a look up close at ice formations. You never know what you will be able to see. The next two photos show two of those examples. You can easily see the ice that was formed around the fountain perimeter. It created a natural glow in contrast with the rocks under the fountain. The addition of some leaves that had fallen from the trees above also added more color to an otherwise neutral scene. The last shot is a macro of one of the rocks. Looking at the ice covering the rocks reveals intricate patterns in a macro shot.