I am so grateful for a friend of mine posting about the meteorological term used to describe the uncommon occurrence of frozen fog. Pogonip. Sounds so much more fun than just “Frozen Fog”. The word was coined by Native Americans to describe the frozen fogs of fine ice needles that occur in the mountain valleys of the western United States in December, according to the almanac.com. It is one of the few things I enjoy about the cold winter months. The beautiful landscapes it creates, and for the chances to try and hone my skill at some macro photography. On the morning I took these pictures there was pogonip EVERYWHERE.

My morning chores begin at the hay barn to let the cats out, and grab my “chuck wagon” to take buckets of feed and hay out to the rest of our animals.

I open the the chicken coop, scatter some scratch on the ground and there is a flurry of feathers from happy clucking hens. I take a few moments to check their water and put some out some layer crumbles before moving on.

Walking next door to the coop to feed our horses, Tootsie is nodding her head telling me, “YES! I want my breakfast please!”, Abby is pawing the ground impatient with me for stopping and taking pictures of everything, Venus is pacing the fence, swishing her tail, and pinning her ears at Romeo, who softly nickers at me in a deep tenor, reminiscent of Luther Vandross.

Pistol is doing his daily downward dog yoga stretch as I approach barn #2, and Ellie Mae is gazing longingly at her orange bucket and licking her lips in anticipation.

Ellie Mae never disappoints when there is a pogonip morning. If she has been standing outside, there is always some attached to the long hairs of her winter coat. When its in her pretty black mane, it looks like she is turning gray. This morning, there was a little bit on her eyelashes too.

B Flock is the last to be fed on the morning circuit. There is a random railroad tie in the middle of their pen, placed there by the previous owners of our property, it too was covered in some snowy frost. The texture of the wood and the light on dark contrast caught my eye.

I took all of these photos with my Samsung Galaxy Note 9. I wanted to go inside and grab my Canon, but I had appointments to get to, so I settled for snapping pics with my phone as I went around. Then as I was opening the driveway gate to leave, nature had one more little surprise for me! There were a few of these spiky little frost “thingys” (sorry, haven’t had time to research any sort of technical term for them…) attached to the fence next to our driveway. There was no spiderweb or anything I could see it attached to, but it was very interesting to look at. Pogonip is so cool, thank you Marilyn for the vocabulary lesson on this day.