I’ll have this topic, my weekly one from last year, still peeking in occasionally because I like the comparisons, especially right now as the first indications of spring are popping up. So let’s step back to 2012.
That winter, I had a small aquarium that held a handful of finds from nearby ponds and streams, and an unidentified snail had laid eggs right against the glass, which I was lucky enough to capture. I was lucky enough to capture their hatching too, seen here, but this isn’t a huge accomplishment because, if you’ve ever seen any eggs hatch, it tends not to be a quick or momentary action, taking place instead over a period of many minutes; for snails, it’s exactly as you’d imagine and takes a whole lot longer. In fact, witnessing actual motion from them was almost impossible, but over two hours of shooting, changes in position between frames indicate that it was still taking place. You can see the transparent outer walls of the enclosing sac, ruptured on the left side, as well as a few discarded iridescent eggshells, a couple of newly-emerged snails, and several still within their eggs. Using the aquarium allowed me to set the light source at will, and with a little experimentation I found the best angle for these details; each egg was perhaps a little larger in diameter that a straight pin shaft.
Two years later, things were very dramatic.
This date in 2014, we got hit with a serious freezing rain storm – or at least, serious for North Carolina’s ill-preparedness for such things. While the ground temperature remained too warm for the roads to get treacherous, the weight of the ice took down countless power lines, and countless limbs and trees stretched over power lines, knocking out electricity throughout the county. I snagged a variety of photos, including of the holly tree in the yard, before we ended up having to go to The Girlfriend’s Mother’s house overnight to actually have heat. I suspect that storm was a primary factor in The Girlfriend putting ‘a fireplace’ on the list of preferences while house hunting – something which she fulfilled that same year, I might add.