Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I went to the University District Farmers' Market today, getting there around noon. I came home with cherries, radishes, tomatoes, and apple strudel, and bought and ate a salmon slider for (part of) lunch. I saw another shopper carrying strawberries, and asked where he'd gotten them; he told me, but warned that they might be all gone, which they were. Still, the cherries were more than I'd been hoping for. (There were lots of other vegetables, and a lot of meat and fish, but I didn't want to risk carrying the meat and fish around for an hour and a half or more on such a nice warm day.)

The bus from here to the U District was rerouted because the 520 bridge is closed (again) this weekend. On the way over, that made little difference to me, though a couple of passengers jumped off suddenly when the driver announced that the next stop after the Bellevue Transit Center was going to be in the U District. By the time I was coming back east, there was a lot of traffic (closing one of two bridges across the lake will do that) and a slow trip.

I looked out the bus window while we were headed south on I-5 and saw a swath of cloud in gorgeous green and red. The color shifted toward the orange, faded, then came back again. I think this was a circumhorizontal arc, though not as complete as the one shown on the Astronomy Picture of the Day a week ago. (I looked at that day's APOD, read the copy, and guessed that I'd be unlikely to see one this far north; sometimes it's pleasant to have been mistaken.)

Here's a cell phone photo of the cloud and a tree, cropped but not otherwise altered:

This is a very pretty planet, and one of the pretty things is the view out.

I've been spending a lot of my lunch hours walking around, looking at green and red and yellow and orange leaves, and late purple flowers, under bright blue skies. (It's been a good week for that, and while the neighborhood my job is in isn't remotely exciting, it's got lots of trees and flowers and such--suburbia old enough to have sidewalks, and mature trees.)

Last night I stayed up late enough to watch the eclipse. This wasn't too much of a stretch: totality was at 10:22 EDT, and my nominal worknight bedtime is 10:15. And my bedroom and living room windows face southeast, so I was able to get undressed and otherwise ready for bed while watching the eclipse (except for toothbrushing). I watched the shadow finish covering the Moon, then we turned the light out and took a look at the eclipsed Moon by Earthlight. And then I lay down on my pillow and closed my eyes.

As a bonus, when I left the house this morning a little before sunrise, the full Moon was shining bright and clear over the hills of Inwood Hill Park.

I went downstairs yesterday afternoon, to get a bit of fresh air and visit the ducks, just because. I stopped to fiddle with the garden, trying to prop the crocuses up against the wind (this works better than it sounds, though not as well as I'd like). Just as I finished, it started to rain.

Ah, well. I turned my collar up, and walked into the park anyway, as the people who'd been there for hours, since the sunny morning, streamed out. A few were staying--a game of catch over here, three kids using the homemade bicycle jumping track there.

The sky was all light gray, the air warm, and I could smell the rain. A spring rain, by that simple fact.

Walking along, I realized that what I needed was a place to sit, so I could feel the rain, and listen to it on the winter's fallen oak leaves. I climbed onto an old fallen tree trunk and watched the rain, and the pale gray sky, and listened for a while, then went up into the hills.

The sound of the rain, the early Spring buds, the way the bare branches stand out against the sky, an almost-black gray against an almost-white one.

I turned back when I noticed that my ears were cold. Next time, I'll take a hat. Next time, it'll be greener, and the sounds will be different. Next time, maybe Andy will be home to walk with me.

What color is the sky on my planet? For an hour yesterday, it was patterns of dark and pearl gray, with a yellow wash at the eastern horizon.