the clouds of summer
Aug. 6th, 2011 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliSo many clouds. . . .
Lightning stabs once. The clouds gray ahead, but over them looming darkness, and in the foreground, things are lit up and stark in contrast. Trees. Signs. Trees. Especially trees denuded of branches that would reach the road, so that the pale bark of the trunks catch it most brightly. And as it approached, the leaves start to toss and shake, all turning up their paler undersides in the wind, so the trees tremble in silvery shades. A few drops fall. It thunders, setting off two dogs with barking. And I'm inside before it starts to rain. In due course, I'm looking west and it's a sun shower: all the leaves gilt on all the trees, and the raindrops shining like diamond, and it takes me a minute to think that I'm a fool. I go to the east window and there's a delicately shaded rainbow, arching from horizon to -- roof-top. And about a third of it shows a double rainbow, even paler.
Slate-blue clouds like masses of bobbles -- you see only the rounded tops, not the dip, so they do not look like waves, but like upside down standing stones --standing more or less in lines, but if I had seen them in a painting, I would have thought it some kind of modernist thing, not realism.
On a cloudly day, if it is not an even cover, it is amazing how ruddy the entire landscape can look in the reflected red and orange.
Lightning stabs once. The clouds gray ahead, but over them looming darkness, and in the foreground, things are lit up and stark in contrast. Trees. Signs. Trees. Especially trees denuded of branches that would reach the road, so that the pale bark of the trunks catch it most brightly. And as it approached, the leaves start to toss and shake, all turning up their paler undersides in the wind, so the trees tremble in silvery shades. A few drops fall. It thunders, setting off two dogs with barking. And I'm inside before it starts to rain. In due course, I'm looking west and it's a sun shower: all the leaves gilt on all the trees, and the raindrops shining like diamond, and it takes me a minute to think that I'm a fool. I go to the east window and there's a delicately shaded rainbow, arching from horizon to -- roof-top. And about a third of it shows a double rainbow, even paler.
Slate-blue clouds like masses of bobbles -- you see only the rounded tops, not the dip, so they do not look like waves, but like upside down standing stones --standing more or less in lines, but if I had seen them in a painting, I would have thought it some kind of modernist thing, not realism.
On a cloudly day, if it is not an even cover, it is amazing how ruddy the entire landscape can look in the reflected red and orange.
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 04:35 pm (UTC)--beautiful!
I saw a beautiful rainbow the other day, during a sun shower. Such a magical treat.
What you say about upside-down stepping stones, what fun. For picking your way across the waters of the sky.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-07 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 08:48 pm (UTC)Are the clouds you're seeing mammatus clouds?
http://www.google.com/search?q=mammatus+clouds
no subject
Date: 2011-08-07 01:17 am (UTC)