Winter Colors

Evening Flocks

Winter comes softly to the Gulf Coast. We don't have chilling nor'easters, and we never wake to a world encapsulated in white. The temperature may gradually get to jacket weather, but it does so only reluctantly. The real harbinger of the season is the subtle changes in the world's color(1).

Houston winters bring with them clear skies that glow in color at dawn and sunset; vast skies that blaze along the horizon only to slowly burn down to the navy of the night sky. The vibrant greens of the prairie shift to the  tans and grey of old vegetation. Late blooming beggars-tick and other wildflowers burst in a desperately brief last flash of summer color.

This is not intended to be a flowery love letter to winter on the upper Gulf Coast. It is, I guess, a recognition that even when it's subtle, no place can wholly resist the change of seasons. Here are a few pictures from the advent of winter, taken at Brazos Bend State Park and other Houston locations.

Winter Sky

Remnants

Snag and Sky

Winter Grasses

Prairie

American Lotus, Dead Stalks

 

Julia Butterfly on Beggars-tick (Bidens)

Late Dragonfly on Winter Grasses

Water Hyacinth in Winter Evening Light

Evening Flocks

Evening Flocks Abstract

Arrow in the Water

NOTES

(1) - I've posted on this before, but it's the one time in the year here where we can actually feel the pace of life reflected in the world around us, so it gets another.