Our first snow of the season. The temperature hovered at 0ºF / -18ºC. So, of course, I was outside with a camera in hand capturing the frozen dawn.

The dinner bell above is a reminder of my grandfather’s house, a place I spent most summers growing up. The bell was used to call us up from the field.

As we were building our house, the crew installing gutters insisted downspouts on our back porch would look out of place. They insisted we install rain chains instead and I love them. The melting snow had frozen as it fell in the rain chains. Add the colors of the sun rising behind them, and the chains were irresistible.

The dominant feature in our yard is a giant maple tree sitting in the middle of the open field. The tree was left when the field was cleared back in the 1930’s and we designed the house to avoid getting near the root system. The dogs enjoy the shade it provides in the summer. As the readers of my blog about the dogs know, we have spread the ashes of previous dogs under the tree so that it is fittingly called the Tree of Life.

As always, you may click on any of these images to see full size, retina quality version of each image.