April 24th

We report: now just past its first quarter, the moon is doing really well in getting brighter and larger in our sky. We would be very concerned if it ever did badly in that endeavour, which means we have to appreciate the smooth process of the cycle now and then.

April 23rd

We report: stationary high pressure zones have been keeping the weather very mild and easy around here. There is enough air flow circulating that there are fluctuations here and there, but only just. Despite this all, the sky is still new and different every day.

April 22nd

We report about the sun, very high in the sky. Well into April, midday, this is where we expect it to be, but we had not noticed the height of the sun in some time. We were thinking about the beginning of spring for weeks, but we missed how it settled: windy, sunny, very green.

April 21st

We report: we are here when the sun falls into the sea, and once it has gotten very deep below the surface, nothing remains of the sky. Meanwhile, the waves never stop rolling; in the dark, they look much colder than when our nose was burning in the sunshine.

April 20th

We report about a dank night in city lights: there is a sheen to the sky, pearlescent and vaguely eerie in the past-midnight brightness. Impossible to tell the hour, if not for the stillness of the world. We stumble, spooking a cat into hissing and crab-walking down the street.

April 19th

We report on a windy afternoon: there are all these trees which are still painstakingly growing leaves, and flowers too. We can tell this is not an easy day for them. All those flowery trees are shaking, and the petals are flying all over, forming a spring blizzard.

April 18th

We report: today again, there was rain in the morning. It went away before noon, and ever since, the sky has been especially large and bright. We are standing against the wind, so the clouds are moving towards us and over our head. The air is light, full of pollen.

April 17th

We report: lately, there is a lot of pink in the sky. It is the last bright colour we see in the evening, and the first one we see in the morning. It rains over it, today - not much, but it washes the pink off, and we watch it flow down the drains. It leaves a chill in the air.

April 16th

We report: spring night sky in the Northern Hemisphere. Venus vanishes behind the horizon soon after sunset, Jupiter remains for a bit. When it gets dark, before midnight, we see Procyon and Capella, Castor and Pollux, Sirius, Betelgeuse and Aldebaran (our favourite neighbours).

April 15th

We report: it is still early morning, something a little fragile in the moment. We can tell that this is one of these few seconds of life we might remember years down the road, for no reason that we could pinpoint. A lone swift is feeding on the aeroplankton.

April 14th

We report: at the moment, we can only see the part of the sky in which the rain clouds are absent. Although we know it is raining on the other end of the rainbow, it is odd seeing it glow so well in the naked blue sky. It stays bright for a long time, fixed in the sunshine.

April 13th

We report in the cold evening: the sun has gathered pink clouds around itself - for warmth, surely. Coming down the hill, the chill has our lungs feeling raw. We put many of our scarves away last week, foolishly thinking we would not need them anymore. Our hubris knows no bounds.

April 12th

We report: it somehow happened that a few street lamps turned on right as we walked past them. It also is true that the time is around nightfall. There could be no links between our walking by and the ignition of the lamps. Our expert is convinced that this is some sort of omen.

April 11th

We report: the clouds are strange, so we have to observe them for a while. Only a wrinkle in weather, but we spend our whole life looking for those wrinkles; we cannot leave it be. These clouds seem to be developing asperitas, a variety of clouds that always catches our eye.

April 10th

We report: we cannot remember the correct term for this optical phenomenon. We want to call it a halo, so we do, but our expert does remember: it is a corona. The difference is in the way light interacts with the clouds, they say. Refraction for halos, diffraction for coronas.

April 9th

We report: the sun now sets well into the evening again. It will rise in the early morning, so that the rest of the day, bracketed in between sunrise and sunset, may know daylight throughout. The mid-afternoon sunsets already seem distant to us, though they were mere months ago.

April 8th

We report: the sky has been mostly clear at night lately. It gets warm during the day, but it is still a fleeting thing. Even at the peak of temperature, we can feel that the ground is cold beneath our feet. In the last hours of the night, the flowers shiver under the moonlight.

April 7th

We report: for the first time this year, nettle stings on our ankles. We should have known there would be nettle when we saw flowering ribwort plantain on the path. It is a little windy, a little rainy-like, but the afternoon rolls on despite - or thanks to - the uncertainty.

April 6th

We report: when we see cirrus appear in the sky, it is almost always out of thin air. At first, the shapes make sense; the wind shear pulling a line and drawing arabesques. If we look away, however, we lose all hope of understanding what happened. We can accept that.

April 5th

We report at a sleepy hour of morning: our expert pulled us from bed before the sky had even begun to lighten. We dozed off a few times before going out, and several more while the sun was rising. Thinking about it now, we cannot be certain we were not asleep the whole time.