the best of the rest (in 2014)

Landscapes — I wish I took more photos of the vastness of the beautiful landscapes I see. Sometimes they are so vast, I am at a loss as to quite how to best capture them. We spent a lot of time exploring prairies out in central Minnesota this past year, and so the top ten landscapes are mostly prairie shots.  But Minnesota is a transition zone between tall grass prairie and broadleaf forest, so there are a couple of forest shots as well.  The photos are arranged in chronological sequence of season (sort of), so this is a seasonal Minnesota perspective.

Sunrise on the frozen Mississippi River in Monticello, MN last February. The temperature was a balmy -22 F (-30 C). Water vapor from the open water rises like steam in this intensely cold air.

The extreme cold of the 2014 polar vortex created some spectacular waterfalls, like this one on Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis taken in March.

I couldn’t leave the next photo out, even though it’s not Minnesota.

We escaped the polar vortex with a short trip to northern California in April. The light at sunset created a beautiful pattern of green and deep gold.

My favorite farm scene out in central Minnesota, taken with HDR and then converted to black and white.  Taken in May.

Torrential rain in May and June caused flooding along the Mississippi and raised the water level flowing under the Stone Arch Bridge through Minneapolis.

All that rain in May and June filled the prairie potholes and created an intensely green prairie landscape in June and July.

Orange highlights from blooming Butterflyweed dotted the green prairie landscape in July.

We traveled up to the Northwoods in July to see the northern bogs and mixed forests there.

Typical northern Minnesota landscape, flat with lots of puffy clouds, grain silos, and acres and acres of crops.

After a month of travel in Southern Africa, we came back to a spectacular show of fall color.

I could look at this scene all year.

And now it’s back to the monotonous colors of winter in the backyard.

Happy New Year from the Minnesota Backyard.