If Frost makes a Poem, do we call it a Rime?

There are several springs located along our shorefront. Come winter, some of these bubble up enough water to keep from freezing, creating small pools of water along the shore edge that are ideal for the animals coming to drink. These are much harder to find come summer, when the water level covers them, because the springs are small and delicate things.

They are ideal for anyone looking for beauty in the small details. The colours in the sand that comes up from the spring, the patterns the water leaves trickling over the hard sand, the tracks drawn in the snow by the creatures that come to drink, all are beautiful. Most fantastic and breath-taking of all are these exquisite frost creations that blossom along the

water's edge. Soft rime forms when water droplets form on objects -- often following fog, or mild weather, or in this case, the evaporation of the water from the spring.

Soft rime is feathery, and milky in colour. Hard rime is not so milky white in colour, and looks more like a comb than a feather. It is also much harder to remove than this delicate form of soft rime, which is itself closely akin to the hoar frost you see on windows in all sort of fantastic designs.

The subtle differences in these frosts is probably only of huge interest if you're about to find them forming on the leading wing on your airplane...

The word comes from the Old English, via Old Norse... from hrim, which means 'frost'. Go figure.

It always strikes me as one of Nature's poems, the repetition of the design, the whimsical shapes... so perhaps it's just fitting that it is referred to as "rime."