Bank's Lake National Wildlife Refuge and Pear Blossoms

Greetings from Bank's Lake! (This photo was taken two years ago, when my friend took me for a boat ride and we kept getting stuck on the roots of the Cypress trees) (REMEMBER to double click on the photos to make them large for better viewing.) Today, I would like to share a few photos that I took on the way to Bank's Lake back on February 1st, 2009, because the weather was interesting with the clouds and the sun playing peek-a-boo. I live only about 1 mile away from the National Wildlife Refuge, so we (my dog, Gizzy, and I) visit there often. If you would like to know more about Bank's Lake, just click here: U.S.Fish & Wildlife Service On the way to the lake, I passed my two most favorite pear trees. They are late/winter pears and give an abundance of pears that I like to cook up into a delicious compote. I look forward to these pears, but look, they were blooming already and it was barely February. We were still expecting some frost and freezing temperatures. My concern was that the blossoms won't survive and I would not get pears again this year. They didn't produce last year. I was told these trees skip a season sometimes. But the blossoms sure looked beautiful. I wanted to share some pictures for those of you that still had snow to provide a little glimpse of Spring. Here's Gizzy inside the car, barking and yelping at me as if to say: "hurry up already with the picture taking and take me to the lake..." When we got there, I placed him on an old tree stump and proceeded to take a few very photogenic shots of him posing like Rin-Tin-Tin (for those of you too young to remember, Rin-Tin-Tin was a German Shepard movie hero dog, similar to Lassie that I saw on TV in Germany when I was a kid) Soon, the clouds began to get darker and thicken, so that the sun was almost covered completely, except for a few rays that reflected on the water. Eventually, it got so dark that I feared of getting rained on and we headed on home. Only it never rained that day.