A bright cold morning, the fields silvered with frost, and the paths an entertaining mix of ice and mud.

( Read more... )

I took some pictures yesterday but didn't have time to upload and post them until today. The night before, a windstorm blew down the contorta willow sapling that used to stand between the house yard and the south lot, near the big maple tree.

( Walk with me ... )

These questions were written by losseloth.

1. Do you have a favourite cause that you support?

2. If so, how do you support it?

3. Have you been an active member of an organization (attending meetings, volunteering, etc)?

4. Have you ever led any group?

5. If so, how was your experience with it?
OR: 5. If not, why, is it a conscious choice, of lack of opportunity?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

It started snowing yesterday, and now there's about 5 cm of snow, an amount that is very rare here. I went for a walk to see the beach, because it looks so cool when it's covered in snow. To my surprise, there was even ice on the water! A fragile crust of little floes had formed and seemed to slow down the movement of the waves as they licked the snow away from the breakwater bit by bit.

At first, I didn't hear any bird calls. I did see a few sanderlings darting around, some big birds (probably black-backed gulls) hovering over the sea, and a huge swarm of smaller birds, but they were all far away. I was about to leave when suddenly an impressive formation of geese appeared in the sky. My birding app identified them as barnacle geese. Then the app recorded some more calls, including one from a dunling, a bird I had never seen or heard before.

The snow and the greyish sky skewed my perspective in interesting ways, so that it looked like there were mountains growing out of the sea near the horizon, or like there was a huge wave rolling towards the beach. It felt surreal and a little eerie.

purged:
antagonized
applecider
cupids
daydreamed

unregistered:
crumple
crumples
crumpling
refilling

Tonight I happened to glance out the window and spotted a colorful sunset. So I grabbed my camera and ran outside to take pictures. This gets me started on my goal of taking and posting photos at least once per season. \o/

( Walk with me ... )

Taken on 2 January 2026 at 19:44 U.S. Eastern Standard Time.



The lunar halo of mackerel clouds, darkly dappled by the spaces between, keeps the moon from being reduced to just another circle of warm white light in the electric constellation of the apartment complex—which has usually been the effect when I’ve tried to take a picture. (That startling peacock-blue color was a happy artifact of my cheap-ass flip-phone camera!)

You can see how the moon continues an arc formed by the walkway lights—somewhat resembling the head of Scorpius, with the stairway light standing in for Antares.

We were surprised to see the heron out on the ice last week, since we had thought it migrated each year. But apparently it's not unusual for them to stay put. It was not having the easiest time on the ice though, as up top it had nearly fallen over while trying to walk.

( Read more... )

These questions were written by tabular_rasa.

1. Do you mostly drink tap, filtered, or bottled water?

2. Is it safe/recommended to drink tap water where you live? If not, why?

3. What does the tap water taste/smell like where you live?

4. Do you collect rainwater? If so, what do you use it for?

5. Do you/have you ever had restrictions on water use where you live? What did you have to change about your lifestyle?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

**Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going. Also, please remember to play nice. We are all here to answer the questions and have fun each week. We repost the questions exactly as the original posters submitted them and request that all questions be checked for spelling and grammatical errors before they're submitted. Comments re: the spelling and grammatical nature of the questions are not necessary. Honestly, any hostile, rude, petty, or unnecessary comments need not be posted, either.**

Привет and welcome to our new Russian friends from LiveJournal! We are happy to offer you a new home. We will not require identification for you to post or comment. We also do not cooperate with Russian government requests for any information about your account unless they go through a United States court first. (And it hasn't happened in 16 years!)

Importing your journal from ЖЖ may be slow. There are a lot of you, with many posts and comments, and we have to limit how fast we download your information from ЖЖ so they don't block us. Please be patient! We have been watching and fixing errors, and we will go back to doing that after the holiday is over.

I am very sorry that we can't translate the site into Russian or offer support in Russian. We are a much, much smaller company than LiveJournal is, and my high school Russian classes were a very long time ago :) But at least we aren't owned by Sberbank!

С Новым Годом, and welcome home!

EDIT: Большое спасибо всем за помощь друг другу в комментариях! Я ценю каждого, кто предоставляет нашим новым соседям информацию, понятную им без необходимости искать её в Google. :) И спасибо вам за терпение к моему русскому переводу с помощью Google Translate! Прошло уже много-много лет со школьных времен!

Thank you also to everyone who's been giving our new neighbors a warm welcome. I love you all ❤️

purged:
bags
lightninged

unregistered:
baggy
dished
tidbits