Favorite Memories: Gardening and Those Long Summer Nights!

Happy Memorial Day — or Remembrance Day, depending on your location!

Aside from being a day for reflection, this particular day has always felt like the ”gateway to summer” for me. I'm sitting here writing these words at about 10:00 PM, and it's still a dusky daylight outside with many golden hues on the horizon.

Here in Western Washington state we live far enough north that the days between now and the middle of July a really very long. Not as long as my native Denmark, where it never gets completely dark around Midsummer... but still very long.

I remember some of those summer days, when I was maybe in my mid 20s and would be spending the summers in Denmark. I would go and hang out with friends and we'd play cards, and eventually I'd ride my bicycle home at maybe one or two in the morning. When it was a clear night, I really didn't need a light on my bicycle in order to see where I was going, and the sky towards the northeast would still be a myriad shades a pale blue, orange, yellow, pink and purple because the sun would never make it more than a few degrees below the horizon.

I would usually be staying at my auntie’s house, which was in an area of gently rolling hills with lots of little hollows and small stands of trees, and a small pond/swampy spot at the very bottom. Occasionally the low spots would develop ground fogs no more than maybe three or four feet thick and it would be like riding through an ocean of fog with the top half of my body seeming like it was floating just above the clouds.

It felt almost otherworldly.

Even then, I had a keep appreciation of the beauty and mystery of the natural world.

Soon it will be strawberry season; soon we will be harvesting the first lettuce and greens from our garden; soon the earliest of the potatoes will set bloom.

It's sort of funny and ironic that we often think of summers as being ”lazy,” yet during the summer there was often more to do than at any other time during the year!

These days that holds true as well. We've spent several years increasing the size about vegetable garden and there is always something to be tended to. This year we were ”canceling” our patch of side lawn and turning it into an ”overflow area” for extra potatoes, and I am working to prepare the soil so we have an extra patch to grow onions and garlic next year.

Even as a kid, I always looked forward to helping in the garden. No, I'm not confessing to a fondness for mowing lawns! But I did enjoy ”getting my hands in the dirt” and helping my parents grow the food we'd go on to eat later. Ever since then, I've almost always been growing ”something,” even during the years when I was living in an apartment and just kept a number of tubs and plant pots out on my balcony.

It is now 10:45 PM and I would say it is completely dark. And I suppose that is my cue to go ahead and get this posted.

I hope you have had a wonderful holiday weekend, wherever you may be!

How about YOU? Do you have long summer days where you live? Do you have find memories associated with summer? Or do you live in a place without much in the way of seasons? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 20210531 23:04 PDT
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