8/31/1999
Tuesday

Weather: For the past two days, the weather has been cool and autumn-like. We've been dressing the boys in long pants, and we've been wearing jackets in the mornings, at least.

Leaf Watch: By all rights, it should be too early for any changing color, yet. The drought has caused premature autumn color in a few trees around here, however.




















Background courtesy of
Ace of Space

Baby Blanket Sky


Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins              

Last night as he was getting ready for his bath, Daniel noticed the sunset outside the window and called me to come look at it. "It's peach-colored!" he exclaimed.

He was right. All day the sky had been interesting to see, striated with bands of bright blue sky showing between layers of long white clouds. As I watched the sunset, the clouds' color deepened from peach to bright pink, and now the sky resembled nothing so much as a fluffy baby blanket, with patches of pink and blue.

I've always loved the poem "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the first two lines came to mind as I gazed at the sky.

I gazed at the sky and thought about Nana, and how she loved to watch the sunset. When I lived with her the year after I moved from Maine, we spent many evenings sitting on the glider on her front porch. From there we had a nearly unobstructed view of the western sky, and we'd marvel at the ever-changing patterns and colors of clouds in the light of the setting sun.

Nana took such pleasure in the splendor of the natural world around her. There is beauty everywhere, and Nana always knew how to find it.

Daniel is only six, yet sometimes he is as uncommunicative as any teenager. Trying to dredge any information about his day from him can be a Herculean task.

"Mr. Dans, how was your day at camp?" asked Tab this afternoon.

"Fine."

"What did you do today?"

"Stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Just stuff."

"Well, tell me about something you made."

"Tell Daddy about the space ship," I suggested. The only reason I knew Daniel had made a spaceship was because I'd seen it hanging from the ceiling in the classroom when I picked him up.

"You made a space ship?" Tab asked.

"Yeah."


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