Big Sky Country

I drove downstate among thunderstorms and rain generated by enormous thunderhead clouds, storm cells, the most dramatic I've seen, yowza, and realized they were so impressive because I was on a plateau and could see horizon to horizon -- as I don't at my home in the hills. Pelted by rain that covered my car like a tarp I stopped in Phillipsburg, Mo., home of the World's Biggest Gift Shop and waited for someone to bring me my gift. With God all things are possible, right? No, really, next door was a huge candy store where I bought cheddar popcorn and coffee, in line with my standard on-the-road menu of junque. And greedily ate it, and watched the clouds.

Toad-Stranglers

June thunderstorms with clouds like slate rolling pins and booming noise shook up our area three times this past week. First time, electricity was off for six hours. Second time, a heavy tree branch fell and broke my rain gauge. We were lucky that the eye of each storm just missed us and did nothing but dump needed rain for a while, I'm guessing about an inch each time, not enough to flood. The third storm was last evening. Gully-washer. Toad-strangler. Perfectly seasonable. After poking at us just to let us know who is boss, the storm turned deeply serious as it chugged eastward. Photo was taken facing east, and you can see the dark clouds at the bottom while our area was filling with eerie yellow-orange light.

A Rough Draft of Spring

March has been very gray, unusually gray, or was that my imagination? No, my neighbor Terri noticed it too, and we pined for spring sunshine, but day after day it's as dark at 9 in the morning as if it's 9 at night, and most of the time, raining. It's rained eight days out of the last ten. Even my dream last night included rain. I was out in the rain and found the dead body of a pileated woodpecker and began crying. Nice dream, huh? Thanks, March. It's raining now.

Yes, how many gray days occupied the month of March 2018? How many cloudy days have besieged us until we are all slightly crazy with traffic accidents all along I-44 every freaking day? Or let's put it another way; how many sunny ("clear") days have we had in March? I searched for the answer and found it here. Exactly ONE sunny day all month so far: Saturday, March 3. There's a sunny day predicted for Friday, March 30; that's the only other, if it happens. TWENTY-NINE days out of THIRTY-ONE this month were cloudy, mostly cloudy, partly cloudy, snowy, "T-storms," or scattered clouds.

But before I learned this awful truth I woke the morning of the equinox, March 20, before sunrise, saw a blush of color in the east and excitedly thought, "I will take a picture of the sunrise and call it 'Spring Sunrise'!" and prepared my camera. Sunrises develop their color -- it's like stirring Crystal Light into a glass of water -- so I waited and snapped, anticipating more color, and what you see here, that little pinkish blush, faded and vanished beneath more gray, and since that day it's rained like all get-out. Yes, this is your "nature photo" for the month. I can't even remember what I did all this March except trying to see Black Panther on a Tuesday only to be told at the box office that the afternoon showing was all sold out.

Change of Season

Always there's a September dawn that isn't a summer dawn, and its clouds are like this: purplish, like bruises, but with holes for powdery light. Not chilly cirrus clouds, they're still cumulus--but different. They don't drift or sail. They part and ponder, commanding attention and my silence. We are facing something. I keep the windows shut at night now. The air dries out and the linoleum on the floor turns cold. Often when this day comes I feel sad: The summer left without me. But it's better to say it this way: I left and moved on, without summer. Took this photo down the road at the horse farm.

My Life

Once in a while a sight moves me to the core for no reason and I take a photo and think, "My life. I've just captured my life." And so it was, with this vista of a wildly gorgeous August sky as a cool front drove storm clouds away from Ste. Genevieve, and my happy reminder reflected in the corner of the windshield. My life. . .is a highway. I grade it A. I've made it to the junction of 55. Ahead is open space, an open road (and full-grown corn). The sky's the limit. Things are always working out for me.

"Where've You Been?"

"Where've you been? Haven't seen you around."
"Busy, working. Nobody's seen me or heard from me and I wouldn't invite you or anybody to the house because it hasn't been cleaned for two and a half months. I've got papers and jotted notes everywhere, and they're all important, and if I move any I won't know my own mind, because, see, I got this contract to write four articles a week, for good money, and have to keep coming up with ideas that need to be researched and everything. That's on top of editing, teaching, doing my own writing, answering emails, working some weekday nights, participating in club meetings, trying to lunch with a friend once or twice a month, and creating a three-hour PowerPoint presentation. I quit Facebook. I quit watching TV. I quit my other blog. I quit cooking. I eat tuna from the can. I don't walk every day or go to the gym four times a week or play pickleball or shoot baskets. I dread volunteering for anything. I don't phone anybody. I quit Tae Kwon Do for a while; too strenuous when I need the energy to work. I have 19 students this quarter and 42 students next quarter and they all want personal attention. I get up earlier. I drink coffee at 3 p.m. so I can work a second eight hours."
"Wow, I didn't know you did so much."
"I can do it, but not forever. I have Netflix DVDs I've had for four months. I need to give up something. What else should I give up? You run a business. You know about these things. Please tell me. Remember how they used to tell us to give up something for Lent? I have to give something up for sanity."
"And I remember how all businesses closed between 12 noon and 3 p.m. on Good Friday."
"Different world, that was. So what should I do?"
"Make a list of all the pros and cons--"
"I've done that. It turns out I have to do everything, pro or con, if I want to, like, pay the taxes on what I earn, or buy a new car sometime this century. I am not kidding. There's no one to pick up any slack. I can't slack. I can't count on anything. I hardly go outdoors because there's so much work to do."
[Long silence.]
"Go outside and lie down and look up at the clouds. The answers are in the clouds."
-So I did it and I found the answer, which is to talk with people, stop complaining, plant seeds for salad greens, wear colorful printed Zulily leggings, and buy new insoles for my shoes.

Cirrus

To get a photo of this magnificent cloud that looks so much like the spirit that rose from the remains of this cornfield -- knowing that cirrus clouds are in fact formed of ice crystals -- first I stopped the car and stood in the middle of Highway 109, and then in case I didn't quite get the cloud, I drove to this rise, got out of the car and knelt in the field. Then I drove a ways down and took photos of the cloud from a slope overlooking a farm, and was barked at by a lady's dog, all jowly from fat. The lady came outside, of course, and I explained before she said anything, "That cloud is so beautiful I want to take its picture." "It is beautiful," she said, and she and the dog went back into the house. I wondered if they were the sole occupants of that house, and if they had only each other, and if so, how beautiful and how sad that was at once.

I Don't Hate Winter Anymore

The winter solstice, the day the daylight begins to lengthen, specifically Sunday, December 21, 5:03 p.m. Missouri time, is one week away. I read that the solstice was also once the day of Saint Lucy, Queen of Light. John Donne wrote a poem about it, which begins:

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
    The sun is spent, and now his flasks
    Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
            The world's whole sap is sunk;

I raised a cup of cocoa to John Donne and to central heating.

Hating winter meant hating a quarter of life, so I had to change my approach. I've posted about caulking, covering windows, and clothes. Daily I push myself out the door, saying as I drive, walk, or feed birds, "Is this really so bad? I dread this all year? It's not bad at all." I gave myself things to look forward to. They cost money, but I tell myself I'm stimulating the economy. This mild December in  eastern Missouri has also helped me toward acceptance. I still hate below-zero temps and icy roads. On today's walk, as rainclouds made an exit, I tried capturing the bald light from the low-slung sun. This is what it truly looked like, without filters or anything.

And the Day Came. . .

.  . .when the sun rose like the moon. And only female hummingbirds were left. And the kitchen floor was suddenly too cold for bare feet and I shut off the ceiling fans. Woke from a scary dream -- extremely rare, but almost 365 days to the day from last year's bad dream. And I sought out and wore a sweatshirt in the morning for the first time in months. There were pie pumpkins at the vegetable stand and I wanted one, but, in denial, I bought an eggplant and apples instead. (It was a fine fat piglet of an eggplant.) Leaves are still green, but basil must be harvested or be lost. The weatherman predicted a high in the 60s by Friday. I try to remember that this day comes only to the lucky who still have days.

. . .clients contacted me, three on the same day, after several months. They are buckling down, writing again. I roasted pears and pinched the skins from concord grapes and ran them through the food mill to remove seeds, and froze the pulp for grape pie. Cookbooks lay open to lentil dal and and vegan cheese soup, and I contemplate buying King Arthur scone mix. I chose for lunch a slice of blackberry pie, now out of season, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It cost almost $11 but I have craved it for weeks, since blackberries vanished. I brought out the little artificial sun lamp that sustains me as I reduce my house to two rooms and then to the one with the fewest windows.

It is time to file, caulk, fill, cover, clean, oil, sharpen; assess supplies of salt, cat litter (for icy surfaces), birdseed, canned foods, and water in jugs. Pick up woolen suits from the tailor. Change the sheets from cotton to flannel. Arrange visits with friends who in two months will be hard to get to. Pay the house and car insurance. Propane tank is already filled.

The year is tilting.

A Sunrise Like a Moonrise

Last night had a nightmare, very rare for me. This morning woke up in light of a glassy moonstone grey as I hadn't seen in a while, and suddenly my chemistry changed. From the kitchen, which faces east, I saw the sun struggling upward though shrouds of purple and gunmetal gray, looking more like a moonrise, and for a moment I was disoriented: day or night? No; it's summer becoming fall, heading toward the one equinox I could do without. No one hangs onto the final days of summer as I do, begging them, please do not take my basil and hummingbirds and "honor" vegetable stands. But the morning didn't listen and whisked me along as the earth shifts on its axis, tilts away from the sun, giving me no choice except acceptance. It does, however, provide coffee to lift one's spirits.

Cloud-of-the-Month Club

People talk about storing their music and photos in "the cloud," about sharing their files in "the cloud" and getting "cloud certification" in"cloud architecture." They explain that "the cloud is software as a service." And today, in the city, I saw the mighty cloud that they must be referencing. It was 102 degrees Fahrenheit in the parking lot where I stood, and within an hour the sky was raining and booming and steam rose from the sidewalks. July in Missouri? You betcha!

Rural Rainbow

This morning, another miracle: