Grey Days...

...are good for making vegetable stock, pickling beets, and watching the clouds break apart as they move across the dark sky, letting ribbons of light into the fields. Grey days are good for settling down, thinking hard, letting go. Potatoes, parsnips, celeriac, rutabaga, onions. Leeks, garlic, chard, peppercorns. Water, olive oil, salt and pepper. Grey days are good for chopping and simmering. Harvesting fresh sage and oregano from the brown garden under skies harder than slate. Grey days are good for writing in the corner by the window while stock simmers on the stove. Creamy parsnips and red potatoes, deep green chard, onions pale and thin as half-moons. The scent fills the house, keeps the heat in, keeps your heart from saturating with the sadness of the bare trees and the heavy horizon. Grey days are good for telling secrets, for storing up. Pantry shelves lined with half-gallon jars of sweet pickled beets and garlicky carrots. The sound of the back of the knife breaking garlic cloves. A pot steaming with roots and stems and alliums. Enough good broth to last for many cold months. Grey days are good for silence. They’re good for afternoon naps and thinking walks. The backbone of November. Vegetable stock and naked trees, golden leaves blowing across brown pastures, skies shaped like bone.