I’ve been asked about all the sky pictures on my Instagram. I am recording the conditions, you see. There will come a day, all too soon, when everything here will be gray. So, while it lasts, I’m showing off the blue skies.

Because in a few weeks it’ll be gray, almost every day, until April.

Or, at best, it feels that way because it very nearly will be that way. And this year, we’re going to chart it.

Apropos of nothing, here’s a tiny bit of Saturday’s sunset.

And Sunday afternoon the sun came through a window and the light bounced off something just right. So now we are studying geometry in the kitchen.

Now I wonder, if I’d waited 10 minutes more, if that light would have fallen over the cat bowl. Or maybe the directions are all wrong. Or the neighbor’s house would get in the way.

You could unpack all of those possibilities for six or seven more paragraphs and, before you were halfway done with even the basics of the celestial mechanics of two unfixed points I’d be back to marveling how people figured out even the solstice and agriculture, and maybe even sun dials. I know the longest and shortest dates of the year because it’s learned. If I were farming, I’d plant crops because a calendar and directions on the seed packet told me it was time. Shadows give us an approximate time of day because the sun moves across the sky, east-to-west, just like we’ve always been taught, and just like that spot will move across the floor for a while. But, then what?

A lot of trial and error, I’d guess, hungry trial and error. It’s fascinating to think about how all of these original understandings and discoveries came to be.

You could study the movement of that spot for a few days, over and over, until you had it figured out, but there was probably something good on TV at the time. Right?

This is also from Sunday afternoon. The Yankee is out taking short walks, each day a new distance record, until physical therapy begins the week after next. She’s doing great!

And a lot of rest this weekend helped with that a great deal. Now it’s back to a busy week. A busy, busy week.

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