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As a slight change from my frosty photos, I thought I’d post a few pictures of the after-effects of these chilly nights.
After the frost melts, there is a great clarity and brilliance to the water drops that are left behind. While they are still very cold and not entirely melted, they can cling to plants for longer than raindrops would. If you look at them closely, you can see little bubbles trapped inside them.
The plant in the top photograph is Euphorbia mellifera. I’m intrigued by the way the tiniest of droplets gather in a line along the very edges of some of the leaves. This plant is placed where it gets the earliest sunshine, so any frost on it disappears quickly. The melted drops, however, stay, and add a brilliant sparkle to the vibrant green and red leaves.
There’s not much left of the fennel seedhead above. The seeds fell off it ages ago, and now the rest looks quite skeletal. I can imagine that big drop on the right being clutched in bony fingers. It has become something alien-looking, especially with the trail of tiny drops clinging to a stray grass stem that is entangled with it.
There’s even less left of the plant below. I think it’s the remains of the flowering stem of some catnip. Now though, the melted frost has become like little round beads that have managed to attach themselves to the plant – as if they’re some sort of weird plant/glass hybrid.
The frost on the rose leaves below is still partly frozen and is even more textured with icy ripples and crinkles and lots of bubbles. There’s quite a difference between the irregular shapes of the colder, still icy drops and the more spherical drops that have completely thawed.
The morning I took these photographs I had missed any chance of frost. But I enjoyed having a close look at these drops of melted frost. They add texture and an interesting highlight to the winter garden as they gleam in the morning sun.
Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature 
The trail of tiny drops reminds me of our native glow-worms! ~there’s a good photo of what they’re like at this url: https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/9737/glow-worm-snares
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Wow, what an amazing photo! They look like strings of beads – some sort of Christmas decoration maybe…nature is extraordinary! 🙂
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The glow-worms are wonderful 🙂
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They really are!
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I really like the sharpness and the details (like the little droplets on the plants).
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Thank you! I had fun looking at and photographing the little details. It was good to be able to find something to photograph in my wintery garden. 🙂
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Those are excellent pictures of water drops on plants. I don’t remember ever seeing what appear to be semi-melted ones like those in the final photograph.
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Thank you Steve! (Sorry for not replying earlier – I don’t know what happened there!) The cold of the morning helped me by slowing down the melting of the frost – it’s so good when nature is on our side! 🙂
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So beautiful. You captured the water drops perfectly.
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Thanks Jude! They kept me occupied for a morning! 🙂
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Wonderful photos, Ann – I especially loved the reflective drops on the catmint stem.
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Thank you! I liked those because it felt as if they’d almost become part of the plant with the way they had encapsulated some of the flower remains and had tucked themselves under other parts. 🙂
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I like the irregular shapes of the catnip drops, and their clarity. I like the Euphobia droplets, too, but that’s due in part to the color of the plant; it’s beautiful.
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Thank you! I was delighted to see how much variety there was in the water drops in the garden – and I have some sparkly grass seed heads for another post in a couple of weeks… 🙂
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Simple things like water droplets look so perfect and amazing.
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They do – and they make a very handy subject to photograph at this time of year!
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There is such beauty in these luminous droplets, Ann, and you showed us that no two are alike. Wonderful attention to detail!
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Thank you Tanja! I was really happy to see these in the garden because they gave me something to photograph. 🙂
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What a fabulous idea to photograph the plants coming out of the frost! These are amazing images! It never occurred to me that the droplets would look so different. Wow!
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Thank you Syd – I’m delighted that you like them! 🙂 The semi-frozen droplets are easier to photograph than raindrops because they stay where they are for longer and there’s less chance of accidentally knocking them off the plant. 🙂
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