A 'storm' not for the ages, thankfully

It had been 2022 when the Triangle (the shorthand term locals use to refer to the metro area of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill) last saw any snow or ice to speak of.

So there was a bit of suspense, curiosity and even a hint of excitement when local meteorologists late last week amped up forecasts of the storm system that was heading this way after dumping snow and ice on the country’s midsection earlier in the week.

I’m sure local folks made the traditional stampede to grocery stores to stock up on the usual pre-storm essentials. We did not do that; we’d made our usual periodic grocery shopping several days beforehand. We were grateful the next day when the first of the ominous forecasts started hitting the airwaves, as it’s crazy being in a grocery store when frenzied folk go staple-stockpile shopping. 

And as it turned out, the Triangle did not get any serious bad weather. Snowfall and sleet accumulation was minimal (less than an inch, I’d say, which is a mere cough compared to what I remember getting in Wisconsin during “a storm” in my childhood/adolescent years). And there were minimal power outages, none of which affected us. 

We live south of Raleigh proper, so we probably got even less than those who live north of us received. 

As a precaution, I did park the car I usually drive in the detached garage overnight Friday so there wouldn’t be ice to scrape off windshields the next day if I had to use the vehicle. And even that, technically, proved to be unnecessary, as next-day post-storm temperatures reached the 40s, so any snow or ice that stuck to asphalt or concrete Friday night and was not in the vicinity of tree shade the following morning was melted by the time I went outside for my daily walk around 11:30 a.m. 

Shade was a safety concern on our property, though. It is heavily treed and is situated next door to a 93-acre woods, so while the snow/sleet did melt everything on our driveways by the time I began my walk, all had not melted from other areas of my circular house walk route (about one-tenth of a mile in one loop). So, I elected to do my entire walk on the neighborhood streets, almost all of which were sun-cleared and dried by the time I started the sojourn.

When I finished, I used my iPhone 13 Pro to take the photos of our property that you see in this post. There wasn’t a whole lot of snow and/or ice, but there was some still sticking to grass, concrete and pavers because those areas were blocked from sunlight by trees and branches, as you'll note viewing the images. 

You can see the dusting of snow and sleet on the stairs to the back deck (above) and on the patio at left as well as on the ground in front of the stairs. This area in front of the stairs is part of my walking path when weather is not an issue and I elect to use some or all of the circular house path for my walk. You can see the path better in the first two photos below. While portions of the pavers were cleared, they were not fully cleared, and any step that didn't hit squarely in the fully cleared portions would risk striking snow/ice, so that's why I did not use this path for even a portion of my walk. The pavers in the second photo below are a part of the path also seen in the right foreground of the photo leading off the post. That's the driveway to the detached garage in the background of the first photo below, which also illustrates how the sundry tree blockage splayed sunlight hitting the ground. 

Above and below: Shots of the north side yard, the area of our property that is least open to sunlight during the day in winter. 

Above: One treed area in the front of the property alongside the driveway (and apron) to the attached garage. This view looks southeast. 

Above: Stairs to the sundeck along the south side of the house. We rarely use this access, so it was not an issue for us after the storm. But the concrete walk in front of the stairs is part of my house walk route.  

Above: A chair off to the side of the detached garage driveway. 

Above: I used the iPhone's portrait feature for this closeup of the leaf with icicle. The portrait feature adjusts the camera's aperature setting to allow for enhanced background bokeh (blur). 

Autumn stroll at Yates Mill Pond Park

 

Wednesday was a day to decompress from Tuesday's unfortunate presidential election, so I spent an hour or so strolling the mile trail around Yates Mill Pond at the state park in Raleigh. 

Trees there were showing autumn colors, but I elected to lead with a photo of the wooden pedestrian bridge reflected in the almost-still waters of the pond (above), captured across the way while traversing the trail. 

We saw little wildlife Wednesday, other than squirrels, a few turtles and a beautiful blue heron. Sadlly, the heron flew over us quickly as we cross the bridge in the photo above and landed too far from us for our iPhone cameras to do it justice. Nevertheless, I gave it a try, and my best shot appears among the other shots below. 

Above and below: The pond, reflections and fall colors. 

Above: Wild, dried grass draped over the fence marking the park's southeastern perimeter. 

Above and below: Horizontal and vertical orientation shots of a root cluster and the corresponding tree trunks found along the trail. 

Above: A mix of yellow and red leaves from stacked branches of different trees in front of me along the trail. 

Above: A downed tree trunk off the beaten path, er, trail. 

A tree trunk whose branches of varying directions and configurations struck me as interesting.

Above and first two photos below: Shots of the trail I was on.

Above: Leaves with differing autumn colors.

Above: A short tree trunk stub that looks like it's been in this abbreviated state for some time.

Above: A few turtles not far from the trail on the far side of the pond.

 

Above and first two below: A few different framings of the mill, the first integrating foliage immediately in front of me across the water, the two others after I found unobstructed openings to grab shots without interference. 

Above: This shot shows the most autumn color, but unfortunately it was taken in a backlight situation. Hoping to add some definition and contrast, I ran a copy of the image from my high-dynamic range (HDR) software. After slight crops to the top and bottom and a slight enhancement to the orange, red and green colors, I got the photo you see below. One enhanced definition I was particularly pleased with was the reflection in the water of the red leaves from trees along the shore. 

Above and first six photos below: views of whitened branches and foliage on trees along the shore of the pond on the other side of the pedestrian bridge. I've always liked these tree shapes, whose appeal increases during autumn when they take on this white coloring. 

Above: Resting amid this foliage is the blue heron, but I was so far away from it, that my iPhone couldn't do it justice ... and cost me some sharpness to boot when I elected to use near maximum zoom. 

Above: A cool fall color combo on these leaves.

Another first: Another photographer's fall leaf, floral compositions

In the past year or so, I’ve been on a roll using this blog for various “firsts” — first nonfiction prose series (On Hoosier Gridirons), first recap of photos of a specific subject matter (Garfield Park … in Pictures), first one-post recap of a long-running, intermittent series (Indy Acoustic Cafe Series) and most recently, the first post devoted to a musical review (Søren Bebe Trio et al).

So in that vein, today’s post marks another first here at Photo Potpourri: The first devoted entirely to the work of another shooter. Well, it is the first such post since I halted the yearlong monthly series "Photographer in the Spotlight" in the very early years of this blog. 

The photos you see in today’s post are the work of Lee Ann, my better half, who was inspired by the change of season fall colors to create these line pattern compositions — all on the confines of our wooded property. She took all of these with her iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Lee Ann has mentioned many times that the only period of her working career that she felt eager to go to work and also indulge her yen for artistic creativity was the few years she oversaw a crew of traveling portrait photographers on the East Coast, trying to earn a living as a single mom. 

I mention this to establish that she has a photography background, so compositions you see here come to her honestly. I didn't do any edits or cropping on these, deciding to leave them in their original compositional element ... with one exception. I rotated the seventh photo below one degree to the left to make it horizontal. 

The last photo in this post actually was taken from inside the house looking out into the yard, using the window blinds as a geometric compositional aid. The flowers are from plants Lee Ann purchased for placement on the back deck. The background lines you see in the first few photos are the creases in the deck flooring.