Light nights

This is the longest day of the year. I’ve just checked sunrise and sunset times for Edinburgh and timeanddate.com says they’re 4.26 am and 10.03 pm.

However, I’ve just come in from the garden and downloaded photos I started taking at 10.10 pm, when the sun may technically have set but it was still very light indeed. These are in the order I took them, completely undoctored photos and taken without flash. Even now, 10.29, it's not remotely dark.

It’s been beautiful weather – but oh dear, it can’t last until our catsitter arrives at the end of next week. I would like it to rain soon because the garden is very dry and I’m having to water my tender plants. And if it rained now then it might be nice again for our visitor.

I do love summer evenings. It’s balmy and still; the birds are trilling away outside the window and the garden is frothing with oomph. Even now, at my great age, I find it hard to remember when the flower beds were heaps of sodden dead stalks covered with soggy brown leaves; or when the snow covered the ground, etched with the pawprints of cats and foxes and badgers and the delicate twiggy footprints of birds.

Now the beds are bursting with plants, elbowing for room in my little garden.

Scottish winters are dark and damp much of the time and the days are short. But they’re worth tholing (a good Scots word which means “putting up with”) because of the compensating light nights, when I’m reluctant to go to bed and the dawn chorus starts up around three. The picture above was taken at 10.20 pm.

I’m looking out of the window. It’s 10.35 now. The sky is blue-grey, tinged with pink. The birds sing on.

Tomorrow, dawn is at 4.27 - ever so slightly later.

Soon our six weeks of holiday begin. That's when being a teacher pays off...

PS - for anyone who doesn't read the comments, this is my brother's clarification of why it's light so early/late:

Sunset and sunrise aren't everything. At your latitude, 'civil twilight' - when it's officially light enough to see objects outside - ended at 11:03pm and started again at 03:31am last night. 'Nautical twilight', when it's light enough to navigate a ship, lasts all night in Edinburgh at this time of year. You are at about 56 deg north and the Arctic Circle is at 66 deg, so the centre of the sun is never more than 10 deg below the horizon on 21 June (though of course there's a hill between you and the horizon). Your big brother thought you ought to know that.

Well, there you go. Handy if I ever want to navigate a ship at midnight.