Ice on Blueberry Bush

Ice on Blueberry Bush   (Originally uploaded by randubnick)

When I got up this morning, there was snow on the ground, and it was raining ice.  I got dressed for shoveling, and by that time it was snowing again.  By the time I was drinking my first cup of coffee, it was raining but this time very gently.  It was hard to figure out whether to go out and shovel.  Was it slippery or slushy? Was it going to melt on its own?  I shovel for practical reasons but it is also a good workout, and sometimes there are great photo ops.  But today, I was really procrastinating. So I looked out the back and saw the ice on the blueberry bushes.  I wanted to take some pictures, so that got me motivated to get started.  I went outside and took a couple of pictures, and then spent an hour shoveling what turned out to be heavy slush.  Tonight I cropped the image, and then cropped twice more to get close enough to get this composition. What interested me (enough to make me get my boots outside!) were the red buds against the soft green, and the lines of the branches against the geometric lines in the background. (Can you tell what the background is?) I also used Painter to make a posterized version of this image, and I will post it tomorrow.