February 2023 Snow

This weed was about the only interesting thing.  I have been at this spot in the summer but I don't remember what this plant was.

Near the creek there was this sedge that still had green leaves.

This time of year might be heaven for moss.  Grass just stops growing when the temperature is this low.  But moss is different.  It gets water through the leaves.  So here it is with both water and sunshine.  

Oh my!  Coyote tracks.  And look at the fine bits of snow around the tracks.  The wind has been erasing my footprints.  So these prints look really fresh.

More moss having the time of their lives.  Here at the rock wall the temperature has gone above freezing, giving the moss the moisture they need.

Now this is interesting.  The sun on the rock has melted the snow.  But the air temperature was below freezing causing small ice sickles to form.

Notice the air bubbles in the ice.  To make ice for sculptures the ice is frozen from the center so that the air in the water can leave the ice.  When water is frozen from the outside, the air in the water is trapped inside the ice cube.  The bubbles in the ice suggest that the ice was formed from a drop of water at the bottom of the ice sickle that froze on the outside, trapping air inside the ice.  When I took this photo the ice was probably melting and each ice sickle probably had water at the bottom.

More coyote tracks.

It appears that the coyotes do not like to get wet.  So they use the bridge over the creek.  The tracks on the right are old.  The tracks on the left are fresh.

The evil bull thistles.  I pull them with leather gardening gloves.  But they wrap around my hand and get me from behind.   The heads are probably full of seeds to be released in the spring.

Things to look for in this photo.  In the upper left corner are fir cones.  They are hanging down from the branches of a Douglas fir.  This is what got Douglas into trouble.  The cones on fir trees always go up.  They don't hang down.  Only botanists seem upset about this.  The red branches near the bottom are  red osier dogwood.   Behind the Douglas fir in the middle are yellow branches.  This is willow.

The white patches on the bark are lichen.  I wonder why the lichen does not cover all of the bark.

Covered with snow, this Oregon grape is peeking out.  

This leaf is trailing blackberry, a native plant.  Shown larger than life, you can see multiple levels of veins.  Along the edges at the top you can see hairs.  Also, see the hairs on the stem.

There are two types of lichen here.  One has very small, tubular stems.  The other has larger and somewhat flattened stems.

Well, looking back at these photos, perhaps there were interesting things to see.

More than 12 young people were planting shrubs or trees.  They waded through muddy water and worked in the rain and a light snow.