In This Home on Ice II: The Meltdown

The past week or so has been unseasonably warm for February in Michigan, which has been fantastic for human habitation, but not so kind on icicles. You may remember these guys from my back porch from a previous post at the end of January.

Here's a reminder of what they looked like at the height of their majesty:

As it started to get warmer, the icicles started to thin out, lose their individual shapes, and blur into each other:

Here's a closer look:

Look at how much volume they lost just one day later:

At this point they had turned into flat, sharp slabs of ice:

The following day:

The day after that:

The next morning was all misty and the icicles were gone:

But I prefer to remember them in all their January glory. I feel they deserve a proper eulogy:


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
so dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

- Robert Frost

Ain't it the truth, Ponyboy?

P.S. - No pun intended with the whole ice/Frost thing. And can it be a mere coincidence that Frost was living here in Ann Arbor around 1923, the year this poem was published? I think not.