La Nina Delivers the Start of a December to Love

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According to the Farmers' Almanac, La Nina or "the little girl" typically magnifies the weather conditions in any given area.  Areas that receive heavy snowfall typically receive way more, making for brutal winters.  Here in the Pacific Northwest, the long range forecasts have anticipated an excess of the usual heavy rainfall.  So what happened?

For the past several days, we've basked in the rare glow of December sunlight and it's been -- let me find the right word or words -- heavenly, divine, exquisite, and all so rare.  The weather folks are reporting this to be the driest December on record.  Amazingly, Don and Nick put up the ranch Christmas lights in sweatshirts and even managed a wee bit o' tan.  It's starting to feel a bit tropical.

And...  I was able to work on finishing my Shadows photo essay.  This past year, I've photographed my shadow in combination with that of horses, a duck, dogs, and cat.  While I've had my sights set on a cow shadow, getting one proves to be a bit more difficult than I had anticipated.  Cattle, it seems, are bashful about their shadows.  Late this afternoon, Don helped me snag our Black Angus heifers and I snapped a few photos with my favorite, Libbey.  Here's my pick...

I'm still playing with variations on this image -- I can definitely see it as a black & white or infared.
As I was walking up from the cow pasture, the late afternoon sun was streaming through the paddocks.  Seeing an opportunity, I snapped this shot of Irish and our Christmas barn star, the one Don and I made using ranch-grown red Dogwood branchees.  Having holiday lights up sure makes everything festive.

La Nina's gifts were plenty as I continued to work with the low late afternoon light.  I'm really pleased with the following photos of Jetblue and Irish.

On my way to the house, I managed to catch the following shot of Don as he finished lighting the gate.  Beautiful.

To top off a darn near perfect day, we made the decision to send each of our family members the Lincoln Crockett compact disc, Angels and Devils Alike.  It's our contribution to a Plaid Friday kind of Christmas, one where we support local and independent businesses and artists.  Part of our gifting will include fiber artist Maria Wulf's amazing "functional art" potholders, too.  This year, we're supporting a local musician and an artist from upstate New York.  Doing so sure feels good.  Ho! Ho! Ho!