The sky just turned the colour of old denim

I was kneeling in the kale bed, dirt under my nails, when I looked up and the clouds were bleeding into that washed-out blue you only see right before a storm breaks. Not dark — not yet — but heavy with something like memory. The diesel price rose this morning too, but I didn’t care. The air smelled like wet stone and possibility. Sometimes I think farming isn’t about growing food so much as learning how to read the weather’s mood swings.