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.

April 4th

We report in the middle of the night: following up on a solar eruption in one of the sunspot regions our expert has been watching, we are expecting a geomagnetic storm. So far, we have only observed a minor radio blackout, and slightly heightened geomagnetic activity.

April 3rd

We report sometime in the morning, after sunrise. It is a small, dim pocket of enduring grey drizzle prolonging a layer of the night. Unlike the rain we have had lately, this one has been quietly going for hours. The staticky buzz of it settles something in our mind.

April 2nd

We report: the way it often is on those days that are yet at the cusp of seasons, the sea got too warm, too soon, and is steaming up into clouds as a result. The ocean has to spend some time relearning sunny days, just like we do. The breeze is only a one on the Beaufort scale.

April 1st

We report late afternoon, as the clouds are parting ahead of the night. The light grows warmer while the air gets colder. We will not be here when the sun sets, so we can only trust that it will all go well, in the correct order, the right direction and angle.

March 31st

We report: we step over ribbons of morning fog, trying not to get our feet caught there or in the marshy patches of land. It is not as quiet as when we came here in the winter; there are ducks flying from pond to pond, and we hear moorhens and frogs in the dawn chorus.

March 30th

We report: it had been raining for some time when the sun came out. The sunshine caught the raindrops like so many silver needles, and we were looking for clinking as they fell to the ground. Instead, we heard the whisper of water through young leaves.

March 29th

We report: the anticyclone that had been hovering over our us is moving west, and the clouds now rise and rise and rise. We watch the needle in the barometer move from “fair” to “change”, and without stopping for long, “rain”. Even so, the air is still dry, full of sunlight.

March 28th

We report as quietly as possible: our expert has just seen a doe, there, between the trees. They tapped us on the shoulder, we turned around, and in this half-second, it was gone. We think it will come back if we stay very still. Our expert generally has trouble staying still.

March 27th

We report: this night sky is a little hazy, halfway between mist and a proper cloud cover. Either way, it is absorbing light, and keeping it; it has within itself the moon, the stars, and the city lights. The moon makes a valiant effort to show through even as it is about to set.

March 26th

We report about spring showers we had not we realised we had missed so dearly. They only last a few minutes, a challenge to catch. When we do not make it, the small puddles mock us. One time, our expert calls, and holds their phone up to the sky so we can hear how loud it gets.

March 25th

We report: it has not rained in the past couple of days. It is chilly, but the grass is dry enough that we lay down our coat on top of it, and then us on top of the coat. We have no way to prove it, but the clouds that we see from here are the best ones. Perhaps we fall asleep.

March 24th

We report: the west wind veered southwest through the night, and the moderate breeze turned into a strong breeze. Fog banks advanced towards land in the early morning, but dissipated before first lights. It is now the coldest it will get today; it feels exactly right.