Blog Archives - RUTHIE ROSAUER Photography

In the Bleak Midwinter

1/11/2018

We have been having unusually cold weather here in Western North Carolina this winter. When it is snow it looks so pretty! But our snow is long gone and what we have instead is ICE. The words that keep running through my head this week are those penned by Christina Rosetti and first published in 1872. Her poem, set to music by Gustav Holst in 1906, is the Christmas carol we know as "In the Bleak Midwinter."
In the bleak mid-winter
   Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
   Water like a stone.
   I ventured out with my camera last weekend with the temperature at 16 degrees. And took these pictures in Pisgah Forest (Looking Glass Falls) of this "water like a stone."

How do the trees survive winter?

1/2/2018

Much of the trunk of a deciduous tree is made up of dead cells. But if the entire trunk dies, well, the tree will die soon as well. How do the living cells in the trunk manage to keep from freezing to death in the winter?
First, not all the living cells in a trunk make it through the winter. But a percentage of them generally do. To manage this they change their cell membrances to be more pliable, which allows some of the water to flow from the inside of the cells, to the spaces between cells. The fluid between the cells does freeze. But the fluid that remains inside the cells becomes sweeter -- which makes it act as an antifreeze and keep those cells alive.
I learned this by reading an article by Michael Snyder in "Outside Story" published December 28, 2012.

Above photo of a Japanese Maple was taken at Bullington Garden in Hendersonville, NC by Ruthie Rosauer.

Ruthie Rosauer

Ruthie photographs trees because she loves them.

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