A Snowy Interlude

It's beautiful up here today. And with the brightness of the sunny, blue sky, some wonderful shadow contrasts on the snow.

One in particular caught my eye this morning:

The shadows cast by the trees onto the lawn are of course usually most noticeable in the summer but these summertime shadows are very different because the trees are of course in leaf. So the shadow in the images above would simply be a very rounded and more solid mass, rather like the one below, from a fir tree immediately behind the magnolia in the centre background of the image. Again here, the density of shadow cast by the magnolia in the summer will be very much like the shadow now cast by the fir tree, the dense shadow immediately around the magnolia trunk.  

And one just for the sheer joy of it all