Tag Archives: snow

Snow Shots

While I was playing with the kids in the snow, I saw a few things worth photographing. Usually, I can’t do macro photography with other people around – I get too distracted by the company to really see things. But sometimes, with the right people, I can still make it work.

The snow fell thick onto the rosemary.

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Taken 3 March 2006

On this one, you can see the individual snowflakes (cropped).

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Taken 3 March 2006

The holly, too, cupped the snow.

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Taken 3 March 2006

My favourite of the day, probably, is this shot. The hole in the top of the fence post and the angle of the sun left a spiral of fallen snow.

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Taken 3 March 2006

(Miraculously, none of these photos show my usual tendency to want to abandon all colour photography in the snow!)

And, from a previous dramatic weather day, hail in a hedge top.

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Taken 1 March 2006

Family Time

The last couple of weeks have included some really good family time around the Sutherland household, for no particular reason that I can put my finger on.

Last weekend, Fiona decided she was “full up” of wearing trousers (meaning she didn’t want to any more), and stripped them off. She was clearly very comfortable in this state.

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Taken 26 February 2006

Alex, meanwhile, scampered around and around his prone dad until he fell down giggling.

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Taken 26 February 2006

Finally, Fiona got him to burn some of his energy off pushing her round the room in the block trolley.

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Taken 26 February 2006

This week’s notable burst of photography was Friday, when the snow was falling thick and fast. We went out into the back garden to play in it until we got cold.

Fiona with snow in her hair.

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Taken 3 March 2006

Alex, inevitably, picked up a toy gun to play with.

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Taken 3 March 2006

Fiona, after a time, was troubled by the snow sticking to her gloves

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Taken 3 March 2006

So we all went inside and had hot chocolate. Fiona likes hers foamed with my latte milk foamer. Alex prefers mini marshmallows in his.

Later, we went out to the local garden centre to get materials for planting basil. En route, Alex decided to try making snow angels. This one turned out rather well. (I very nearly tried one myself, but Fiona was getting a bit wigged out, and having Mom lie down in the snow wasn’t going to do her any good at all.)

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Taken 3 March 2006

Sadly, the kids got cold on the way back from the garden centre, and much weeping ensued. Fiona turned out to have been sickening with a cold anyway, and spent Saturday fevered and listless. She recovered quickly, crunching through the remnants of the snow with me to the shops that evening.

Today was more fun again, but sadly unphotographed. You will simply have to imagine it, dear reader.

(Have I been enjoying the family more as my energy levels have lifted? Probably. Why have they lifted? Because this is the view when I walk to the bus in the morning.

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Taken 2 March 2006

And this is the view when I get back in the evening.

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Taken 1 March 2006

Note the visible sun!)

Snow Pictures

Although we didn’t get the snowstorms that the north of England has been enjoying (?) the last day or so, we got a dust of snow last night. Today was cold enough that that dust didn’t go away. I was out in it, getting some zippers for making sofa cushion covers, and believe me, it was cold. (Yes, yes, for Edinburgh, a mild day for the arctic, or Toronto, but I’m a Californian and a wimp at that.)

I took a walk through the Meadows, looking for things to photograph in the snow, but found more on the city streets.

Cobbles on Buccleuch Street:

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Taken 28 December 2005

Leaf from an Edinburgh University courtyard:

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Taken 28 December 2005

Ice crystals between the cobbles:

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Taken 28 December 2005

But the richest venue for photographs turned out to be the walk back from the bus to my house, over the football pitch and beside the weedy path:

Dead grass in the snow:

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Taken 28 December 2005

Live grass in the snow:

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Taken 28 December 2005

The blades corkscrew in the cold:

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Taken 28 December 2005

Snow on the weeds:

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Taken 28 December 2005

Quiet Day In

Fridays are usually adventure days around the Sutherland household. I’m home from work, the kids are home from nursery, and we tend to go out and find something fun to do in town.

For two reasons, we didn’t do that today.

One: Disease Girl

This little darling was up and down between 3:30 and 4:30 am, coughing her wee tiny throat out. Even cough syrup couldn’t settle her. I finally got her back to sleep by lying in bed with her singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and my own version of Rockabye Baby. She was no better in the morning, moving slowly and eating little.



Two: The White Stuff

Lovely, isn’t it? First snow of the year, falling thick and fast in the midmorning. The chilly air meant that it lay on the ground for several hours, looking peaceful and bright. I love the snow and the light that comes with snow, particularly from inside a nice warm house.

So we stayed in and watched Harry Potter DVDs. It was kind of a disparate day, one I would like to remember because it was so unfocussed.

I took snow photos out the windows.

Alex needed a quiet day, too. It’s been a busy and exciting time for us lately, and he decided he wanted to lounge around in his pyjamas for most of the morning. He wasn’t in the mood to be photographed, but I got some good shots of him as he watched the climax of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.



Fiona watched the snow.


About midmorning I popped popcorn.

This is a fine art, by the way, popping on a stove. My mother taught me how years ago. You cover the bottom of a pan with kernels, then pour enough vegetable oil to well coat the kernels. Cover the pan and heat it over a high flame, shaking the pan constantly. The trick is knowing when to stop, so that all the kernels are popped and none burned. Like this!

In the afternoon, while Fiona napped, I made Alex a new shield, as I’d been promising for ages. (He loves playing with swords and shields, and just got another wee sword in a parcel from California. Thanks, Trish!) The shield is made of medium-weight bookbinding cardboard, with coloured paper over it and a leather strap. The whole thing is protected with sticky-backed plastic. Alex loves it.



In between all these activities, I got some cooking in – goulash for dinner tonight, and a chickpea soup for Saturday. That recipe, from the ever magnificent Oswego Tea site, has been tempting me for weeks. Unfortunately, it came out bitter and bland at once. I think I’ve rescued it with some sausage and some balsamic vinegar, but the soup was the point of the day when things started to turn.

In contrast to the rest of the day, dinner was decidedly not peaceful. Alex decided he wouldn’t eat the goulash (though he had promised me he would earlier in the day). I decided I was tired of his fussy eating. So I took him upstairs and put him in his bed. He apologised, came downstairs, and still wouldn’t eat it. So his dad took him upstairs, forcibly dressed him in his pyjamas, and put him to bed. It was an epic wrestling match, with screaming, hitting, and numerous bolts for freedom. He shouted and carried on for 10 or 15 minutes after the bedroom door was closed, too!

Having Alex get that fussy took much of the joy out of the memories of the day. But our lives are rarely unmixed tragedy, any more than they are unmixed comedy. The light relief in this case was provided by Fiona, who decided, halfway through Martin putting Alex to bed, that she wanted to go to bed too. She climbed down from her seat, toddled upstairs, and clambered into her bed on her own, barely attending to the tantrum going on a few feet away. While her brother howled and carried on, she laid her head onto her pillow and pulled up her duvet (my offer of assistance was spurned with an “I do it!”). By the time Martin had left the room, she was asleep.