Clouds Over Flower Hill Farm
The often cloud-filled sky over Flower Hill Farm offers daily drama. We have to remember to look up. Sunrise and sunset paint clouds an array of lovely pastels. I get lost in clouds. Blades of light slice through the masses of vapor. Blankets of clouds cast shadows on clouds and the landscape below. There is no limit to the array of forms clouds become. We all see shapes or animals or faces in clouds. Sometimes they are in a row like a parade and other times they are piled up high on one another. Watery vapor wisps by high above the land.
“Clouds and weather, perhaps more than any other world phenomena, show clearly that there is no moment in nature when nothing can be said to be happening. As clouds race towards their own release from form, they are replenished by the mutable processes which created them. They drift, not into continuity but into other, temporary states of being, all of which eventually decompose to melt into the surrounding air. They rise and fall like vaporous civilizations, and the challenge to early meteorology was to reveal their hidden dynamics to our sight.” Richard Hamblyn ~ The Invention of Clouds
The names we use to identify different clouds were contributed by Luke Howard in 1802. I love the Cirrocumulus or mackerel sky way up high in the sky. And the Altocumulus and Stratocumulus keep me watching. The Altostratus and Stratus along with Cumulus stand alone and create their own mood. I never tire of them. I get excited about the Cumulonimbus and the storms and rainbows they bring. Especially when we need rain. All of these and the Cirrus clouds amaze and entertain. Here are a few I have sighted and watched float over Flower Hill Farm. The first few seemed to be smiling.
