"When the bold branches bid farewell to rainbow leaves, welcome wool sweaters." B. Cybrill. After an evening of drizzle last night that wanted to become snow, it is overcast and cold this morning. I was again very thankful that the lights show is essentially up and ready as it seems winter, while not here on the calendar yet, seems to be moving in quickly. Above is one of the many 'V's' of geese we've seen over the garden these past couple of weeks moving along on their migratory routes. Of course there are many geese that will overwinter in the area as urban spaces will accomodate their winter feeding and occasionally provide open water situations. Our pond areas will have geese year-round unless the water freezes entirely. With springs feeding our pond, it is rare to have it freeze entirely over but on occasion, we've had a light layer of ice. The ice gets thicker on the west pond (Lion's Beach) and we've seen ice fisherman and ice skating on the thicker portions.
Above are some of our LED (light-emitting diode) lights that have the benefit of drawing minimal electricity and being long-lived (and vivid!). The drawbacks (currently) to LED lighting options are the cost and the fact that they don't generate heat. Our "old school" lights will melt off snow and show off nicely whereas LEDs might remain buried and never show up if the snow doesn't naturally melt off. We priced the entire conversion of our lights show (literally everything) to LEDs and it was around $100,000! We are adding some each year and in areas where LEDs are prevalent, our power concerns are minimal. Below is our gazebo yesterday morning during our lights test. This structure looks great at night. Marv and Terry put the lights on this weeks ago and mentioned the "spongey" nature of the cedar shake roof tiles as they walked on it. I like the moss/lichen covered look as seen below but we're pricing replacement shingles for next year as that roof is now 17 years old. Four days off now so blogs will be intermittent. Final lights work next week and my shift to seed ordering and interior duties. Winter is on the doorstep as they say (but spring seems awfully close too).
"When the bold branches bid farewell to rainbow leaves, welcome wool sweaters." B. Cybrill. After an evening of drizzle last night that wanted to become snow, it is overcast and cold this morning. I was again very thankful that the lights show is essentially up and ready as it seems winter, while not here on the calendar yet, seems to be moving in quickly. Above is one of the many 'V's' of geese we've seen over the garden these past couple of weeks moving along on their migratory routes. Of course there are many geese that will overwinter in the area as urban spaces will accomodate their winter feeding and occasionally provide open water situations. Our pond areas will have geese year-round unless the water freezes entirely. With springs feeding our pond, it is rare to have it freeze entirely over but on occasion, we've had a light layer of ice. The ice gets thicker on the west pond (Lion's Beach) and we've seen ice fisherman and ice skating on the thicker portions. 
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