Clear ice covers these seed heads.
Ducks leave patterns in the snow at Davenport’s Vander Veer Botanical Park.
Frost-covered branches create an elaborate tracery against the blue sky in Scott County Park.
Frost coats the stems of an ornamental grass.
A bird feeder hangs in a a snowy pine tree.
Seed heads stand out as rounded balls against the white snow.
Frosty branches surround a bird house.
No sitting on this bench for now.
Crossed stems create triangular patterns.
Red berries stand out against the snow.
Pine needles look like they’re covered in heavy sugar.
Stems, leaves, seeds — all covered by frost.
Red berries peek out from behind the frost.
Frost coats dried hydrangea blooms.
“Just remember in the winter/ Far beneath the bitter snows/ Lies the seed that with the sun’s love/ In the spring becomes the rose.”
Snow buries the lower stems of these plants.
Rounded seeds and mounded stems poke through the snow.
This top-down view resembles a starburst pattern.
The frost on this ornamental grass is thicker than the grass itself.
Curved branches are silhouetted against the sky and snow.
Frost encases the needles of this pine.
Water flows quietly through a white landscape.
A tall blue spruce stands sentinel-like behind a stone marker.
The fog, rain and snow of the past couple of weeks frosted Quad-City area landscapes with all kinds of wonderful.
Capturing the loveliness in photos were readers Ken Krumwiede, of Davenport, and Carl Herzig, an English professor at St. Ambrose University, Davenport.
Krumwiede took his pictures around his yard and neighborhood, while Herzig focused on Scott County and Vander Veer Botanical parks.
Both capture a phenomenon called “rime,” defined as an accumulation of granular ice tufts on the windward sides of exposed objects that is formed from supercooled fog or cloud and built out directly against the wind.
Anyone who had the opportunity to drive out into the surrounding countryside before temperatures rose above freezing was treated to white, windswept fields, glazed tree trunks and literally inches of frost on every cornstalk, fence wire, cornstalk and utility line along the road for miles.
It was like driving through the calendar pages of winter scenes.
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