Early Spring Miscellany

It seemed prudent to abandon the Farm this week, because I've got too much to stew about and not enough time to think it out on "paper." So this week's Skywatch contribution comes from Owl's Cabinet, still (on occasion) my repository for the fleeting, ephemeral, odd, or idiosyncratic moments and objects that show up in my life. All of the photos were taken with my cell phone.

The sky photo is actually another of my iPhone moments, taken out the west-facing windows in our school library. I've done this before, but this one has more than the "alien spaceships" (reflections of the banks of ceiling lights behind me); I saw a wondrous cloud formation around the setting sun and decided to shoot it. My antique iPhone (I have a "silverback"--first-generation version) has only a 2-megapixil camera, so the effect is pretty low-grade. But I rather like its weirdness.

On Tuesday night the utopia class wandered the shopping/dining/living complex that surrounds the school, talking about new urbanism and utopian city-planning. The shot at left is of one of the lights that flank the elevators on the main "street." My ever-inventive students thoroughly enjoyed playing with the marbles by rolling their hands back and forth over the surface.

And finally, a contribution to Phenology 101: some of the first signs of spring to show up in my garden (the others include budding pears and peaches, flowering quince that sticks through my fence from next door, and a few herbs poking up through the detritus left over from winter). We could still get a freezer or two, and according to the weather guy, it's snowed in March three out of the last four years. The daffodils, however, are up in force, and I thought they looked rather nice in the window.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend.