My hands are cold and my face is cold and I have been burning the candle, if not at both ends, then extesively at my favorite end of the day, trying to fit a full day's work, and a social life by correspondence, and multiple craft hobbies, and "something for me" (relaxing with a book) into each day and night ...

I put away my latest efforts in the cold concrete packhouse, and pick up my drawing pad to return to the slightly-less-cold house, with thoughts of a hot bath, then maybe sketching or reading in a warm bed.

I walk out into the gravel driveway, a few meters from the house, and the sky is doing That Thing again, where the last of the sunlight soaks everything it touches with a glow that we call gold, although it is the farthest thing from metallic. That "golden" is alive, dusty, earthy, full of the promise of both fruitfulness and rest.

There are clouds of every description in the sky, but those closest to the horizon are that bluish-purple shadow-color that particularly sets off warm light -- like the glowing fields on the distant hills, and the foreground flowers. I wander into the rows of next year's paeony crop, spindly stalks and baby leaves topped by extravagant single blossoms: blowsy loose-petaled corals and warm whites and the occasional fat pink bud. The wind tosses the little beauties back and forth like loose-haired children on a swing.

Behind them is a tall windbreak of native flax, spikey flat leaves rising to eight or ten feet, and above and between them, dark brown knobby stalks with their curling brown leaves, and clumpy sheaves of upturned flowers so deep red they are almost black. The sun picks out their orange pollen, giving the sometimes macabre color a lift into brilliance, accented by the blue cloud-shadows behind. I stand on a fencepost to get it all into the eye of my little camera, and remember the taste of their nectar from a weekend excursion.

The cold is ever-present, and I notice the stiffness in my limbs as I jump down from the fencepost. As I turn and drop, the distant panorama catches my attention again.

The sky is enormous. Where there are no clouds it is a clear, almost greenish pale blue, but this color is far from dominant. Uneven streaks and masses of clouds fill the sky with unending variations in color. The vaporous walls are soaking up some distand sunset -- faintly pink, faintly cream, eye-drenching depths of translucence. They have the clear luminous colors of pale sorbets, or glass wool, or, indeed as they are, water: ice, frost, dew, glacial walls, the fog on a chilled wine-glass, the light-bending volumes above a tropical reef.
Where the light has been absorbed by more concentrated depths of this sky-ocean, the suspended foggy walls are dramatically grey and blue and purple. Darkness and light, color and compliment, layer upon layer.
Among all these shades, the rare white cloud adds yet another sensation, a splash of neutral ground to emphazise the other colors. The whole effect is like being inside a vast seashell, a mote between layers of translucent mother-of-pearl.

The far hills, usually unremarkable, spring into grainy focus in the last of the spectacular light. Behind their curved fields and dark hedges are deep blue-green shadows; the elegant snowy mountains are buried in dark dense clouds beyond vision.

Our fields become darker as the sun filters through the dense hedges, and the chill in my hands begins to outweigh my delight in soaking all this in.

I head inside, knowing that my hot bath will be further delayed, because in the wake of heart-lift I must write.

...

Tomorrow, we are predicted possible gale-force winds, which could very effectively end the paeony season. The Hakets, Dutch owners of the largest fields, are out this evening picking as much as they can salvage of the remaining too-wet, too-weathered crop.
These clouds I have been admiring are the shreds of this past week's storms, being pushed and scattered across the sky to make way for something even bigger.

My latest washing -- rags we have been using to clean -- is pegged out on the line. In anticipation of the wind, I did use extra pegs. ;-]
I take a mischevous delight in leaving it out, despite the impending weather, daring the winds to dry or shred or carry away these scraps of little worth.

I enjoy storms.