Tower and Tree

Once again, unable to take a picture, so another old one from my trip to France. This particular photo was taken outside the chateau Chaumont-sur-Loire. We arrived there in the misty drizzle of a grey February morning, only to find that our tour guide had gotten hours mixed up or something, and there would be no one at the gate to allow us into the castle for about an hour. We all went our separate ways then, wandering around the vicinity, and for me, that meant a really beautiful long, solitary walk in the first greenery I'd seen since getting to France. So I'm not complaining!

It's Friday, so this picture is the obligatory nature piece, but it's also Friday the 13th (so glad I got my teeth out yesterday and not today, eh? ;) ) and so I wanted to go with something that had kind of a creepy look to it. Beautiful as this castle and estate were, I think the castle tower with a lonely, barren black tree are also pretty Friday the 13th-ish!

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Almost Summer...in February

I took this picture two days ago, in my backyard early in the morning before I left for my first class of the day. Even in the morning it felt warm and light-aired, like the first edge of summer, and it was only the first day of February. That's supposed to still be winter, right? We've had really crazy, inconsistent weather this year (at least, the portion of it I spent in California), from a latelatelate Indian summer to a sudden onslaught of wintry cold, which apparently skipped fall altogether, and then all winter we've had one day that's cold and appropriately wintry, followed immediately by a balmy spring-esque day. It makes it really hard to figure out how to get dressed every morning!

So I took this picture of the clear summery morning sky, and the telephone pole in the back corner of my yard, to prove that it's capable of being warm and lovely when, inevitably, the weather changes its mind again and goes back to being, well, Februarian.

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Arizona Winter

This photo comes from a recent trip to New Mexico, back in early January, or rather, from the trip back home to California by way of Arizona. My mother was driving, I was trying to get pictures of the snow in the Arizona desert through the car window on the way back. I love the way the desert looks at any time of the year, but it's especially pretty with snow.



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