signs of winter

This could be white sand under these beach umbrellas, but it's not.

With the warm weather we're having (- 2ºC this morning, but expected to go up to +4ºC by this afternoon) I thought I'd wander down to the waterfront.

a few of the hundred or so ducks out on the water

and a few of the dozen or so people out on the walkway

as you can see, there is an awful lot of snow on the promenade

enough to almost bury this warning sign.













as a comparison, here is a shot from today and one from the winter of 2009, below

I read that Lake Ontario is the only one of the Great Lakes to not be frozen over this winter, but that doesn't mean there aren't a few ice floes

see more signs, not necessarily of winter, here

hearts

A heart shaped postcard from Cynthia Hart's 2013 Victorian Collection and a heart shaped stamp from the 2013 French postal service featuring a detail from a Hermes scarf.

PostcardFriendshipFriday on this Valentine's Day

and Viridians Postcard Blog for Sunday Stamps on this Gold Medal Hockey Day

flowers

as the snow softly falls (again!), let us turn our minds to spring and flowers. I chose some samples of Slovenian stamps with delicate flowers, all designed by Julija Zornik as part of the 2007 series of Flowers of Slovenija

pasque flower (pulsatilla grandis)

Adriatic Lizard orchid  (himantoglossum adriaticum) on the left 

and a Bertoloni columbine (aquilegia bertolonii)

there are more flowers on stamps to be found here

hanging out in trees

There was a theme to some of the cards received from Postcrossing today...

The top card is of a Norwegian Forest Cat (doesn't he have a lovely mane!) and of course we all recognize the panda with those lovely eyes. But I can't quite identify the bird with the lovely colours. It might be a blue tit?

PostcardFriendshipFriday