come for another walk with me

I'm still fascinated by all of the tracks in the snow.  There are more and more of them.   

Especially deer.  I know that deer are a bane of gardeners and come summer I'll probably be cursing them, but right now I'm enjoying the thought of them walking through our snow and I'm enjoying their footprints.  Stepped just right they look like hearts.

 

I keep watching the pumpkins.  I finally noticed a bit of a gnaw on one of them the other day.

And then yesterday the stem was popped off that same pumpkin.

It's a a well traveled spot, whether because of the pumpkins (frozen solid, so probably not) or some other reason.

 

Near there, coming from under the potting shed I see tiny mouse footprints.  I like the thought of them getting sustenance from the pumpkins.  They make the cutest tracks with little lines from their tails.

I guess I'm obsessed with animal tracks (I think I have at least a hundred photos of them in my iPhoto library).  I'm intrigued with the stories the tracks might be telling and how different they are in different areas.  In some places the deer prints are very exact, carefully placed footsteps.  Through the deep snow they often shuffle their feet, and even when it's not so deep I see they sometimes drag their toes.  In other places it looks like they're leaping through the deep snow with sets of prints many feet apart from one another.

Sometimes they make interesting patterns and shapes.  Like this ring:

 

And this. 

I'm also drawn to all sorts of plant material sticking up through the snow.  The Queen Anne's Lace, of course (yes, I have a thing for that plant).

 

But others, too.  Like this milkweed:

 

The snow makes a perfect backdrop to set off the shapes and textures.  There's nothing to distract from these velvetleaf seed heads:

Thanks for playing along and tromping through the snow with me.  Next time I'll have photos of something other than snow, snow and more snow.