Why do grey skies make everything seem greener, or at least make the green deeper somehow? They’re like the rumble bars they put on the road to remind you, firmly, to slow down and pay attention. Traveling along the highways, it’s easy to let everything just slide by out the windows, but then those grey skies darken and cause you to look up and out at what made you notice the little shift in light. That is when all the green hits you upside the head and you say, or well I do, “Wow. That is so beautiful.”

There are other subtle shifts that have the same effect:  the sunlight making the brown-red feathers of the bird visitor who landed on my feeder catches my eye through the window when I’m caught up in my work, a jack-rabbit I thought was just a rock on the side of the road hops out in front of me pulling me out of the podcast I was listening to as I ran, or the sweet memory of kolace at Sokol Hall as I strolled by the guy selling them at the antique farm show. The middle was always the best part.