Frozen

Crofton Lake, iced over.

It is not often that Crofton Lake, a small lake nestled in the trees on Richard's Mountain, is covered with ice. Last year it was frozen for a couple of days, but that was the first time in the five years I've lived here that I had seen it that way. And while climate change suggests increasing warmth, another cold snap this winter has again covered the lake with the hard shell of 'frozen' - not hard enough to walk on (as one hapless lab cross discovered), but hard enough to reflect the sun so brightly that picture taking was almost impossible.

Still, knowing that I needed to come up with a post for the ninth day of Christmas, I took pictures anyway. Our little buddy Cosmo and his mom were along for the hike, and Cosmo delighted in checking out every icy and muddy puddle from parking lot to lake.  I took some video of him having a blast pouncing and leaping and attacking shards of ice in a mucky puddle with all four feet, but apparently this laptop doesn't have whatever it needs to accommodate videos, so if you want to see it you'll have to come to my house and watch it on my camera. 'Cuz three hours of googling, trying, googling, trying, googling some more is enough to drive anyone round the bend and I was already half-way there.  So still photos will have to do.

C'mon!  Let's go let's go let's go!

Yes, I am a nice clean puppy - for now!

Ooohhh, muddy puddle -
wiv cold hard things in it!

Whadaya' mean I can't go out on the ice, Mister Eddie?

It looks interesting out there!
(Note: This is Cosmo's Meerkat/mongoose impresion -
he is not being held up by the leash, he does it
all by himself!)

I wanna go get one of those chunks of ice!

Okay, well these ones'll do then!

Let's walk a bit further

Not as frozen at this end.

More chunksa cold stuff!

Heading home

Ooooh.....itch itch itch itch....

Aaahhhhhhh!

If I ever figure out how to transfer the video, I'll add it to this post - or use it for another!