I remember when I was young(er), my teacher used to make us keep a book of 'useful phrases' for compositions. That is assuming you read voraciously and is acutely aware of unique expressions.

The problem with these useful, neat little phrases is that often, they're pulled out from books written by 'Westerners', so a lot of things actually are only vaguely comprehensible, or comprehensible as far as your imagination takes you.

Well one of these neat little phrases that sound mildly pompous is, "cobalt sky". Like, first of all, "cobalt" is such a pompous term that only arty-farty people use--you know, the way they throw stuff like 'burnt sienna', 'ochre', 'vermillion', 'ultramarine', 'chrome yellow', 'lemon yellow', 'turquoise', 'mauve', 'crustean blue' around. (Okay, I made the last one up. But there is a blue that starts with "p", I know. Haha.)

[Digression: If you want to know what "cobalt blue" looks like, just go and pick up a small pot of paint in any art shop. Hee.]

As I was saying, I've never figured out why my pot of blue paint is called "cobalt blue" or where the expression the "cobalt sky" came from. I mean, "cobalt" is actually an ELEMENT? Like its

Symbol is actually 'Co' and its
Atomic number: 27 and its
Atomic weight: 58.993 and lo behold it's actually a
Light grey transition element.

Ok never mind. To cut this dumb preamble short, I just want to say that, I've never seen what I felt to be cobalt blue skies until now.

Check out the blue in that picture. It's that blue EVERYDAY now. On extremely clear days, where there's not a cloud in the sky, you can spot planes in the air. If you're lucky, they'll leave white trails behind as they fly.

What can I say?

B-E-A-utiful. That's what.

I've never seen blue like that before. Know that song?

I love spring. :)