April 2023
April 2nd
We report a partial halo above the hidden sun. We might have not noticed it had this cloud not been here, but we watched it for as long as we could, and then the sun slowly emerged. We tried to keep track of the halo, but the sky soon became too bright to see.
April 1st
We report: it is a dark morning on the coast, although the sun has already risen a while ago. It looks cold out here, but it really does not feel like it (we are still grateful for our hat and scarf). There is not a soul on the beach except for our expert and us.
April 4th
We report that a few owls are living around this place. They seem to be crepuscular, and they usually come out around this time. If we stay really still, we can hear them going about their business, and even see them sometimes. The sound of their howls is comfortingly unsettling.
April 3rd
We report: we are looking at the sheets that we left to dry on the clotheslines overnight. There is a bit of wind this morning, and the younger trees are swaying in the breeze. The pink sunrise light is casting moving shadows on the white sheets.
April 5th
We report: we got lost on our way somewhere. We took a few wrong turns and missed a few correct turns, and a portion of the road was flooded. We pulled over, and our expert looked for a map in the back of the car for a long time while we watched the rain start to fall.
April 7th
We report in the space after the storm, those clouds that we have only seen a few times in our lives. We had to text our expert to make sure we were, first of all, not dreaming, and then, right about the name of these clouds. These are mammatus indeed. We can still hear thunder.
April 6th
We report: we are so far still here and most of the rest of the world also is. Some things have changed since yesterday - the colour of the sky, the hat our expert is wearing, and the type of tea we had, and some will be different tomorrow as well. We will be here to notice them.
April 11th
We report on this spring evening, when the wind rises. The rest of the world quiets down, and in the low light, we let our thoughts get picked up by the breeze as well. There are few such moments in life, when time lies down for a bit and you may stand still by its side.
April 8th
We report: for how long we stared up into the dark, there was a point when we could not figure out whether we were inventing stars amongst real ones. Some of them blinked in and out of existence as we kept on looking, and when we blinked too, we found them again.
April 9th
We report a field of clouds stretching far out into the sky, precisely in between cold and warm air. It is a cloudy day that is still half-sunny, with mild temperatures and a lazy breeze. Spring is really starting to show itself in a way we can feel and not just remember.
April 21st
We report mild temperatures on a cloudy day. It got gradually warmer in the afternoon till we heard distant thunder. There was no rain, and the storm seemed to stay far away until the sky cleared later on; even the gulls did not seem all too bothered, shrieking way up in the sky.
April 10th
We report: today, this wide open sky sounds to us like a concert of a single note. Everywhere else we look is a bottomless blue, but this cloud is floating in the direction of the sun, slow and steady. We are watching the bumblebees fly around the wildflowers.
April 12th
We report: there were red sprites during this storm, the quickest, weakest flashes that we could barely even see. Even then, we immediately knew what our eyes had caught. This is the storm above the storm, way up into the stars, the one we are not really meant to see.
April 13th
We report walking in the rain, strands of hair sticking to our face, when a piece of the sky fell down in the distance. Through that hole, light poured down and flooded the path ahead. We picked up the pace to try and catch it, but the clouds knit back together before we could.
April 14th
We report: nothing we know is as good and nice, we thought idly as our neck started to twinge, as great and long white clouds furiously tearing through the sky on a windy day. Then it got cold, but we refused to move until the sky could not be described as blue anymore.
April 15th
We report a sweet bloom of pink when we thought the sky was too overcast to see the sunset. After walking in the damp evening air, there was a blush on our expert's cheeks, and over the bridge of their nose too. It started raining when the sky faded to grey.
April 16th
We report: a blue evening after the sunset, some clouds breaking up the colours in the gradient. We are attempting to determine whether we will be able to see stars during the night, but things could go either way looking at how the clouds are moving.
April 17th
We report that we smelled like the wind when we came home today. This sometimes happens when we stand around in an open field, and then stand around some more if we have the time. In the spring grass; a tender green that the wind carries, new leaves that bend easy in the breeze.
April 18th
We report: the tide is always rising quickly here, greedy and indiscriminate of what it swallows in the process. It is not yet warm enough for us to go barefoot on the beach, but our expert tells us they want to go swimming. It is just the two of us on the shore today.
April 19th
We report that we have had a sigh trapped at the bottom of our chest this whole day, far down a chasm we could not reach into. The sunset began as we were trying to get there again, and as colour began to pour in, we found our breath. We spent a while tasting our relief there.
April 20th
We report: this is around the time of the very early morning when we feel like a new person for a brief moment, just because we are awake here and now. We make resolutions as though it is a new year, we convince ourselves that we will achieve them - and then we go back to sleep.
April 22nd
We report: as we have noticed in the past, it is often in moments of transition that the most interesting events occur. Though transient and ephemeral themselves, they leave lasting impressions in their wakes. The rainbow was there for a few minutes, but it was oh-so vibrant.
April 23rd
We report an easy morning. We woke up by ourselves, feeling fully rested; early, but not so early that it felt very wrong getting up. A lot around us was still asleep, and the sunrise was slow and sweet. The morning light remained golden until late in the morning.
April 24th
We report: now, we step into Earth's own shadow. In the smallest hours of the night, the moon will set, and the night will become as dark as it can get. We see the clouds begin to settle in the sky, and the air, mild during the day, has become cold and dry as the wind rose.
April 25th
We report: it smells like rain and it looks like rain, but we are only getting a few drops at a time. The wind keeps changing directions, and the clouds with it. There is a part of the horizon where the sky is bright blue, but we do not know whether that is our past or future.
April 26th
We report a day of April, when we got hail and sunshine, and it was cold but we got sunburnt. The grass is growing, but the forest is still half-naked. This is spring as we know and love it, and when we got home, our eyes still teary from the wind, we felt a good kind of tired.
April 27th
We report: distant clouds are catching the sunshine in its last rays. Lately, the days have grown to be so much longer at both ends. This morning, our bedroom was bathed in grey light long before we needed to get up, and now, though it is late, the sun clings to the horizon.
April 28th
We report one more storm in the night, this time right above us, with no gap of time between lightning and thunder. We are used to hearing thunder from a distance, a low kind of rumbling far away. This time though, the snaps of electricity cover the whole spectrum of sound.
April 29th
We report: the way clouds curl gently into themselves in the sky when it is this windy always feels a little dissonant to us. We can see trees sway wildly, we struggle to walk against the wind, but when we look up at the sky so bright, these cirrus only form the softest shapes.
April 30th
We report high above the shore, the sky moving like an ocean. At the edge of the pier, we see swirling masses at our feet and over the horizon. It is not quite a storm here when there is always a little bit of a storm brewing in this place. The dusk will be swallowed by the rain.