Berries, snow and ice

Yesterday I noticed that snow had collected on the tops of some of the berries growing next to our gallery building, but when it happened it was far too late in the day for me to even hope to get a decent photo. Thankfully, it hasn't yet gotten windy enough to dislodge all of the snow, so I was still able to give it a shot today:



Because of our recent wonky weather—which included rain over the weekend, a snowstorm Monday afternoon, and a temperature drop that had us waking up to single-digit temperatures on Wednesday—the water flow into and out of the museum's casting pond is both substantial and rapid. So when I went over today to see what kind of ice had formed since our weekend thaw, I saw some interesting formations right where the water comes out of the pond. In this next image, you can see on the left that there's quite a bit of spray where the water hits the ground; as a result, the surface of the ice that's formed looks a lot like rock candy:





I was more than a little impressed by how much ice had built up on this relatively small branch on the other side of water outlet:



Finally, a fallen branch that overhangs the stream a few feet down from where the water merges from the pond