It’s been a very long, very cold winter.  It’s the beginning of March and there are still mounds and mounds of snow and mostly grey skies.  There are a few hints of spring with the occasional flock of robins and the lovely little heads of snowdrops poking up at the edge of the snowbank in the garden. Living in the northern climates, it’s those little glimpses of hope that keep one going at this point.  It seems that we’re all just waiting to thaw, physically and emotionally from the long winter.

Snow melting off the rooftop causes ice to from on the the shrubs in my garden.  Branches become encased in ice.  As the water and ice flows from one branch to another it creates these sculptural sheets of ice that appear to still be flowing despite being frozen solid.  I took quite a few close-up images one day, with the sky reflecting through and around these ice sculptures.  It created some very abstract images with interesting patterns.  Those abstract images then created some lovely patterns in these mandalas.  Somehow, the mandalas don’t appear as frozen as the original image.

While we’re all waiting to thaw, perhaps these mandalas can remind us that there is beauty to be found even on days when we feel frozen in place.