Clouds can be so pretty and songful and worthy of guessing games – but not these clouds. These clouds are like a blanket of white grey from horizon to horizon- the colour of snow – a lid that is closed, ephemeral and full of gloom.
Interesting that this kind of rainy, snowy, inclement weather is called a depression and if the weather is like this for too long it makes us feel depressed. But they don’t call a wave of warm settled weather an up-ression ( although it does lift our spirits) they call it an anti-cyclone as opposed to a cyclone that can blow your house away and curls clockwise or counter clockwise depending on your hemisphere. So who claimed the word: depression, first. The studiers of the weather or the studiers of the mind? (As usual we will not consult Aunty Google. My questions are only ever for mulling over. I can google it too but sometimes it takes all the fun out of a conversation).
These clouds make me want to eat.
I would like to go to space simply to look down and study the weather and watch the sky from within it.
See that pile of branches – that is the edge of a huge pile of branches that the ice storm brought down. The first thing I see every morning now. Piled up in the front yard. So sad.
I am sure I have told you of my dream to have a huge world map on my wall, that is as big as the wall – it would be a massive screen showing the weather drifting or surging across the world with no borders, dotted with tiny unobtrusive notations on temperature and wind speed and precipitation. It would be topographical. Wherever my curser landed a little box of notes would report exactly what was going on. No entertaining speech, no histrionics, no predictions, no interpretation or experts or victims, just that moment. Soundless and true. All adjectives banished. All spoken words gone. Just the facts of that place and that moment in that tiny box and the swirl of the clouds and wind drifting around border less world. Imagine that. How inclusive it would feel. I could see at a glance the temperature and conditions at your place. The heat above cities and silent sandstorms in the desert and winds across the sea. And when I am not in the room the weather quietly moves about unwatched because the screen would never be off. I wish I were clever enough to create this wall of world weather. I think it would be a life’s work to create.
I do love my job at the mill – I think I have helped literally hundreds of people learn how to bake by now – but I miss the weather. I miss the sky. We have two tiny windows way up high in the warehouse that houses the mills and I must look up to them a thousand times a day. You can only see a patch of sky but it is enough.
I wish for you moments of joy today. Joy is so singular and not as rare as we think. But we have to be open to it. We have to feel it and note it. Otherwise our moments of joy rush past too fast and are easily forgotten under the ominous heavy lid of thickening cloud.
I hope you are all well today.
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
59 responses to “CLOUDS”
I well understand your wish for a huge global weather map . . . I would be totally enthralled by such also. My darling dad was a country boy who lived his young years by the weather. Well before science enabled us to know and understand he began making me look at clouds and judge the winds and make reasonable guesses as to what lay ahead. Coming to Australia the circumstances were so different . . . but in spite of long and hard days of work he would frighten Mom and me by going out onto the rocks alongside the sea during frightening storms to learn how it worked here. Often he thought the newspaper forecasts more than somewhat wrong . . . ‘nasty’ me loved to tell my school classmates that BOM might again be on the wrong track . . . and have them come back the next day ‘How on earth did you know ?’ 🙂 !!! Still look at BOM ere I look at the news . . . these days they do have the ammunition !! :Lovely to hear from you . . . even thp’ not a baker have looked you up at the mill . . . .
The sea is a perfect spot to see what is coming .
I loved your pictures today. Somehow you were able to capture the magic in that sky of white that has pancaked down on your landscape. Lovely to see you pop into my mailbox today. Cheers!
I love your idea of a weather wall, I think it would be mesmerizing. I particularly like the ‘no adjectives’ part. Would that we could get the news media people to adopt that idea. We too are monochromatic, some wet heavy snow over night, just enough to make a mess and require plowing. I’m beginning to wonder if the sun will ever be back!
Hopefully soon!
I live in Wisconsin and know those skies well. I too want to eat. I would love to see the sun again. Wishing you well.
It seems we have had so little sun lately.
Hey Cecilia,
I loved the way you have captured the white beauty of the nature.
Thank you!
Here’s the thing about those doomy gloomy clouds. They are absolutely positively beautiful and they make everything appear in photos as if it wants to be in blank and white but can’t quite make it. The images are stunning. Dark outlined shapes against a mother of pearl lightbox. I love them.
Mother of pearl light box- I love that!
I never thought about where the word depression came from but now I will until I get my answer. I have to turn on all the lights when weather gets like that. Here it’s heavy fog and rain all winter. My daughter and I started watching “Cooked” on Netflix last night and they talked about bread and flour. I forwarded a couple of links to your bread baking posts to her. We have Bob’s Red Mill flour but I think you have better at your mill. She wants to start baking bread and it seems sourdough is healthier from the fermenting. Lots of questions. Don’t let the depression in either form get you. I’ve missed you here.
I love your photos – so little snow where I live, if any. Your idea of a huge wall of a map made me think of Annie Proulx and the house she describes in Birdsong. It’s just the sort of thing I think she would do. I wonder if you’ve read her …much to enjoy!
what lovely wintry weather for staying inside and making hot foods like soup.
Hmmm- I wrote a note saying (reading?) how beautiful your phantastic photos were. Something happened – it never appeared. Thought I’d take another go at it. Your white on black struck me as John Muir-ish in composition. Beautiful! And I loved the description of a ‘mother-of-pearl light box’ – that’s mind candy! Stay well and happy – great to read from you again – lovely surprise!
There is also https://earth.nullschool.net/ which is in globe form. It can be customized using the menu at bottom left.
Thank you!
I hope that you are keeping well and healthy. Its been a long time sinse we last heard from you and your exploits.
Where did you go, Miss C?? I keep looking for you and worrying if you are ok.
So, have you given up on your blog and left the lounge hanging?
Almost 5 months with no new blog, and I am still suffering withdrawals. I know that lives change course, but I hold hope that you will come back into our lives. Wishing you the very best, always.
I am back !