For parents teaching their children to garden, it is hard to compete with the apps on their tablets and phones, such as “Farmville” and “Grow A Garden,” that grow plants and communities seemingly overnight.
In many area gardens, beds of early beets, carrots, turnips and garlic bulbs will be harvested between now and early August, challenging us to choose short-season and frost-hardy varieties for continuous planting.
Rows of vigorous fall-planted garlic have anchored the garden with their lush foliage, superseded only by perennial rhubarb that thrived even when its leaves were snow-covered on May 12.
At this time of year, midway between the autumn equinox and winter solstice, the stars Vega, Altair and Deneb are positioned high in the south at twilight.
After the Summer Solstice, waiting for us just around the next bend in time’s progress, the shadow will begin its drift back toward me, slowly demonstrating the diminishing light and the shortening days.
Halfway between the summer solstice – the longest day of the year – and the autumnal equinox -- the time of equal day and night –this gardener is feeling swept up in the incoming high tide of growth, maturation and ripening.
At month’s end, 44 minutes will have been added to nighttime. Experience the difference as darkness falls earlier each evening and lasts later into the morning.
This glorious image, a tour-de-force of 21st-century science, reveals solar dynamics crucial to our awareness of our planet in space as well as teaching us about the universe of stars beyond Earth.
We experience sustained maximum sunlight during the six-week period that spans from May 30 through July 13, when days are 15 hours or longer between sunrise and sunset.
