Look at This!

Just look at this! Recognize it? That is a bright and cloudless sky that I have not seen for months. The local weatherman says that this has been coldest winter here since 1979 so it is not just my own complaint that winter has been long and hard.

Today the sun came out and burned the few morning clouds away. The temperature rose quickly. DH and I went to order a few things for a bathroom remodel planned for spring. I am glad we did as the home improvement stores were like a sleeping bear, coming to life slowly with lumbering people wanting to look at windows, shingles, and paint chips. We will be happy to know our stuff is on the way while others are beginning the looking process.



After a late lunch, I went out on the deck and the sun beat down on my chair next to the wall. I was warm head to toe for the first time since October. I looked up and there was the sky, a beautiful indigo swished at the edges by a cornflower blue shade; the sky looked as fresh as scribbles done with blues from a Crayon box. The maple trees were loaded with buds that will someday be obnoxious seeds helicoptering down to my deck. However, I ignored that fact and just enjoyed seeing all those fat buds, tinged with a chestnut hue, swelling before breaking into tiny leaves.


Recently I read Sara Wheeler’s definitive biography of Denys Finch Hatton. When describing his lover, writer Karen Blixen’s (Isak Dinesen) life in Ngong, Kenya, Wheeler wrote, “Writers have to stand up and live before they can sit down and write.” Ah, today’s sitting in the first sunshine of a new spring was really living!