Green Leaves and white clouds

I think it was Bob Geldof who said during an interview that nature was uncompromisingly beautiful on every scale. It's a quote whose sentiment has remained with me since hearing it, and I was reminded of it while standing outside University the other day waiting for a lift.

As cities go Cardiff is remarkably green, and the street outside my department is particularly nice, with plenty of trees as well as an interesting mixture of buildings. But I'm sort of used to it now and its impact on me is not so great. I guess I must have been thinking about something, however, when I happened to look up into the sky.

It's been a while since I had my breath taken away, but the view did just that. It's hard to describe how I found the clouds to be so amazing. Colours are often more vivid after rainfall, so maybe that was it. In any case, the mixture of the deep blue of the sky, the white of the clouds and the green leaves on the trees; the delicate pattern of the clouds themselves, with different sized details, and just the quality of the light was spectacular. I felt cleansed and refreshed, as though I had just run my hands through cold clear water.

Something so... everyday... and yet so beautiful. It would have been too easy to have missed it; to have not looked up, or to have not concentrated enough to pay proper attention to it. How much of the beauty of this world do we miss everyday?

It's all there. All we need to do is look.