A Vermont Minute.

Part of my time last weekend was spent toodling around southern Vermont in search of skies.

The skies never quite materialized despite forecasts and teaser clouds, and as the odometer churned, I wondered about the sanity of my venture.

I looked for rivers, and found none which beckoned. I looked for barns, and found none which called to me. I looked for wildflowers, but they’d all dried up in the preceding month of drought.

When at last I’d resigned myself to finding the route southward, a glint of gold caught my eye, passing over my shoulder, or rather I was passing under it’s watchful brow – the steeple of a town building in West Dover.

I turned the car around and parked, then took this shot with Gizmo and my 2X extender:

This steeple was fully clad in copper flashing and sporting a jaunty weather vane.

It troubled me only slightly that its directional letters were reversed from my point of view.

I got back into the car and resumed driving, but due to a lucky accident of parking I had to drive a little way up a side road to reverse direction.

And the driveway I chose to turn around in was flanked by a farm pond full of water lilies:

Ah, Serendipity, You Rock!

I threw Gizmo back on the box and got these shots before resuming the journey home.

Blooms beneath cat-tails:

…and  closer view of a blossom:

And among the hundreds of beautiful magenta blooms, one contrarian:

It wasn’t the fraught skis I’d been hunting, but when the object of my desires failed to materialize I was pleased to have these shots to come home with.