Goodbye to the longest day of the year

It's the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. At quarter to nine, there was enough light to see clearly and walk outside. A quarter moon was high in the clear sky, still blue from the hot midday, not yet given up color for blackness. I thought of the telescope I got for Christmas nearly 50 years ago, packed in its box in a closet. I should get it out and look at the long shadows cast by the sunlight on the hills and craters of the moon, but unpacking the scope, setting it up, then taking it down, would take too long. I settled for a long, bare-eyed look at the moon floating high in the sky.

Today's heat was a reminder of solar power. The aluminum knob atop my car's shift lever was blistering hot when I left the office. Stepping from the cool office to the late afternoon heat made me gasp, and the enclosed car sitting in the sun was hotter yet. Temperatures in the 90s are predicted all week. Although on this day the sun takes its most direct aim at this place, late June is usually not the hottest time of year. Usually that comes in July or August after the Earth's surface and atmosphere and cloak of seawater have had a few months to absorb and store the sun's heat.

But even now, even as the afternoon temperatures climb higher for the next few days, we are already headed for a rendezvous with darkness and cold. Even on this longest day of the year, the twilight approaches. These long afternoons will grow shorter until the evening meal is surrounded by darkness. The lower sun will lengthen shadows; bright sunlight will evolve into an annoying glare. The nights will become as long as this day. Six months from now, in deepest, dark December, the sun will halt its southward dip and head north again, a simple phenomenon of planetary physics, a fact of living on a planet whose axis is tilted 23 degrees.

This summer solstice marks the day when Earth's axis leans farthest toward to sun; the winter solstice is the day that axis points farthest away. On this day, we celebrate the longest daylight of the year and head, inexorably toward the twilight.

Days are shorter, but summer lingers on

On our 6 a.m. walk this morning, my wife noticed that it was not as bright as it had been. Well, we are past the summer solstice, I said. After six months of steadily longer days, daylight is shrinking again. The sun is rising incrementally later and setting slightly earlier each day. Tomorrow's sunlight, according to Weather Underground, will be 15 seconds shorter than today's. Although the solstice is past, we still have many sunny days ahead — and much hot weather.

In my wife's garden, the blooms are prolific, and these colors will last a few more months before the chilling frost that accompanies longer nights will send the flowers into hibernation. The daffodils and azaleas that first heralded spring's arrival a couple of months ago have folded their cards now, but they have been replaced by a variety of blooms whose names I can hardly keep track of.

But I do know the name of the hydrangeas, whose colorful and intricate blooms are a source of fascination and whose thirst for water keeps me alert to early signs of wilting. Our hydrangeas are doing well enough to make me want more, to see them grow to head-high and to flourish with innumerable blooms. There is a simple satisfaction in growing things. My parents thought toiling in a garden was worth it only if the garden produced edible results; mere flowers, no matter how beautiful, could never compete with a succulent tomato, a mess of butterbeans, a bushel of sweet corn, or a pod of okra. Beauty was not a goal; survival was. But I have been granted the great luxury of time to stop and smell the flowers.