The sun rose this morning at 3:03 in the morning and will set tomorrow at 12:44 am, for 21 hours 41 minutes with the sun (in theory) above the horizon. That’s assuming a flat horizon, which mine isn’t. Even at its lowest the sun is less than 2° below the horizon, so it stays light all night—white nights, they call them in Scandinavia. Star-gazing and aurora-watching are definitely out of season at least until August.

We’ve reached the thunderstorm season, though there are days like last Saturday when it’s clear (and hot—88° above) most of the day with clouds building in the evening. Other days it’s cloudy all day, but afternoon and evening it’s not unusual to have thunder and rain.

The garden loves it. Especially, I’m sorry to day, the chickweed. One of the zucchini (8-ball) is now blooming, with both male and female flowers, and the beans I panted late are germinating. The delphiniums are budding, though I have to look up to see them – the buds are above my eye level. For some reason the daylilies at the east end of the bed are well ahead of those at the west end, even though they’re only about 10 feet apart – the east end started blooming a week ago; the west end still just has buds. Maybe I didn’t get the fertilizer evenly distributed.

The days are getting shorter now – one of the reasons we are a little melancholy when solstice comes. We know it is the beginning of the slow slide into winter. Still, the garden is yielding lettuce and herbs, I can get vine-ripened tomatoes (locally greenhouse grown) at the Farmers’ Market and the days are usually comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt. At least as long as I keep moving faster than the mosquitoes, blackflies, whitesocks and no-see-ums!