North Pole Weather 7/23/12

The sun rose at 4:22 this morning, and will set at 11:30 tonight for 19 hours 8 minutes of daylight. At solar noon, at 1:57 pm today, the sun will be just halfway up the sky, at 45°. It still don’t quite get as dark as civil twilight, though that’s only going to be true for about 4 more days. As cloudy as it’s been lately, it actually gets fairly dark.

Yesterday it cleared off and actually got fairly warm – my sister in Sierra Vista, Arizona said it was warmer here than in Sierra Vista! They must have been having a cold wave. I still don’t think we made it to 80 yesterday or in fact on any day in July. At least the garden is getting watered! Today is supposed to be cloudy again.

My tall delphiniums. The two salmon heads are lynchis, and the lattice is 7′ high.

What with the creative writing classes and the rain the garden has been pretty much left to itself, but I did get the beans and the zucchini picked yesterday. I think I’ll take the excess to class today, and if any is left over take it to the food bank.

I swear the delphiniums grow taller every year. This year the base of the flower stalks are mostly above my head and the tips, not yet open, are a good foot above the 7 foot lattice. It wouldn’t surprise me if some reached 9 feet. The lilies are well budded, and the lynchis is blooming. I’m pretty sure the lighter shade is a hybrid with the salmon lynchis, though the flower heads look quite different.

North Pole Weather 7/9/12

The sun rose at 3:35 this morning and will set at 12:15 tomorrow morning for 20 hours 40 minutes of daylight. We’re now losing about 6 minutes a day, and while the sun is still more than 45° above the horizon at noon, it’s dropping lower by about a tenth of a degree per day. It’s still generally warm by our standards (high 70’s) though we had a couple of days last week that didn’t quite make 70. No heavy rain, but quite a few light showers.

Two bean beds, and you can just see the peas climbing the trellis in the background.

The garden has gone from each bean and strawberry being a cause for celebration to wondering how I can keep up with it without turning vegetarian. I picked a zucchini yesterday that was over a foot long and weighed well over a pound. Thanks to the rapid growth our long days promote, it was still tender and tasty. But it is clear that I have to start checking the squash plants daily—they are already starting to shade out the lettuce in the holes around them. Peas have finally started blooming, and have shot up to the point that I need to raise the pea fence.

The squash is about to shade out the lettuce.

The delphiniums are now topping the 7’ lattice, and the first flowers are open. Still no flowers on the lilies or lynchis, but the buds have appeared on the lynchis, and two varieties of rugosa roses are in bloom. I wish sometimes that the Summer Arts Festival were sometime other than summer, but I’ve signed up again for the creative writing class. I think I’m going to have to find some neighbors who would like produce!