sky

There isn’t a day here, at the farmette, when I am not paying attention to the weather. And the sky. It becomes a habit, much like evening blogging has become a habit and starting the day with a cup of espresso and ending it with a glass of wine are, too, very comfortable habits.

Of course, on days that I travel, weather is a necessary preoccupation. It creates expectations – of possible delays if it’s stormy, of smooth transitions if it’s not. So I’ve been tracking it. Good for Madison at the time of departure (this afternoon). Okay in Detroit – the point of connection. Drizzly but decent in Paris – another connection. And glorious in Madrid where we finally disembark and leave the world of airports and airplanes. And glorious, too, at points thereafter.

We’re heading for Andalucía – an autonomous region of southern Spain. The skies seem blue there right now and I want that – to take walks under deeply blue skies, but I’ll keep in my pocket that image of my Midwest corner, where one minute, as I step outside of the farmhouse, I see this...





...and a few minutes later, as I pull the garbage can to the road, in the same spot, I see this:





It makes you feel dizzy and happy just to see that sky.

Of course, leaving for a place that has a habit of enduring blue skies in disproportionately large doses adds to a giddiness today. Still, I raise my cup of frothy espresso to that Midwestern sky. And I look forward to our return to it some weeks from now.