Gray Sky vs Blue Sky

At the University Farm today, the manager and I chatted about the abundant spinach and chard, the new method of keeping plants warm under covers in extreme cold, a possible student research project in the physics of the plants' warmth under those covers, the squirming larvae due to arrive at the beginning of the semester, and the advantages of photographing plants under gray sky. These advantages can easily be seen.

Their colors do indeed pop.

Even the old dairy building in which the culled deer are refrigerated before butchering and much of the farm's equipment are stored has a certain beauty under our typical winter sky. 

The red bittersweet, ochred wood, fading graffiti do indeed pop.

But.

In a contest of one versus the other, I'd take a strong blue sky and shadows any day.

Even today.

Bittersweet

Viewed straight on, bittersweet is spent, wrinkled with drying and age.

Viewed from underneath, it's still lively and colorful.

That's the kind of day it's been: high wind blowing in strong rain, oddly balmy temperatures, a nation wondering what has gone so wrong, and the discovery of a former student who struggled in school but has succeeded in life.