A little after 2 a.m. yesterday Anchorage entered a 28-day period during which the light never stops. Specifically, we will have 24 hours of either sun or something called “civil twilight.” That’s when the geometric center of the sun is six degrees below the horizon.
Even though we technically have a sunset, the sun is still within those six degrees. It keeps the darkness from taking hold – at least for the next 27 days.
Civil twilight is not to be confused with astronomical twilight or nautical twilight. But it sure confuses the folks on whom it endlessly shines. As I noted in “Breaking up is hard to do,” the increased daylight makes us all a little bit giddy.
Kids ride their bikes until well past 11 p.m., and ice cream trucks ply their wares long after what would be quittin’ time in the Lower 48. People fish all night and then go to work. Or they’ll play softball until they drop from exhaustion (and directly into the cool embrace of a bucket of brews).
We just had the rainiest May on record, which put our garden and greenhouse a little behind schedule. I was getting a little cranky about this, even though I have no room to complain: DF has been doing most of the work.
Stoop labor
However, a recent big blast of sun has kick-started the greenery. All the tomato and cucumber plants that DF started from seed some eight weeks ago are growing like rumors, producing multiple blossoms and even some little fruits. A couple of weeks ago, one embryonic cuke wasn’t even as thick around as a pencil and no longer than my thumbnail. Now it’s more than four inches in length and has the girth of a single-stick popsicle. If this keeps up we’ll be slicing and eating it within another couple of weeks.
This is nothing like the gardening of my youth in South Jersey, where hot summer days meant swift, luxuriant maturity. (For plants, anyway.) But I don’t think we ever ate cucumbers by the end of June. The near-endless light and the heat that builds up in the greenhouse go a long way to convincing our babies that they woke up in the tropics.
Today I took my turn at stoop labor. Kneeling on the cool ground and leaning on my ungloved hands, I dealt with the chickweed and dandelions that I’d allowed to take over two of the strawberry beds. It was ticklish work, given that the weeds had woven themselves in and around the strawberry plants. It was almost impossible to use a hand rake or other implement of destruction; instead, it was pull, pull and pull some more.
The knuckles and heels of my hands are now bright-red and tender, a sort of gardener’s road rash. That can’t be helped, because I hate working with gloves. You can’t feel the difference between a chickweed tendril and a new strawberry runner. And again, if I hadn’t let them get this bad to begin with my hands wouldn’t be so torn-up. So that’s a big mea Curad to my hands, and the hope that I’ll be smart enough to stay on top of the weeding.
Even though DF is retired, it simply isn’t fair to expect him to do all the heavy lifting outdoors. After all, I’ll be enjoying the strawberries (and the raspberries, carrots, mixed lettuces, rhubarb, Asian greens, snap peas, potatoes and cucumbers) right there along with him.
A different kind of work
Besides, I like the close-up fragrance of the yard: crushed clover, wet soil, the bitter scent of yanked-up dandelion stems. The sun was hot by Alaska standards, but a steady breeze cooled me (and kept away the mosquitoes). Chickadees sang, the occasional Steller’s jay squawked, little-kid voices drifted from down the street. It all sounded like summer.
For a little while there was peace: no articles to meet, no ideas to pitch. Just me and the yard, and the chance to start and finish something specific. When you’re a full-time freelancer, you spend a lot of time thinking ahead. Even as you slay one clutch of deadline dragons, you’re also trying to come up with more topics (and hoping a client will say “love it!”).
Today, I had a task I could get my hands around. The strawberry plants are no longer choked with grass and weeds. As I stood up from the last bed I could swear they already looked more vigorous. Can’t wait to savor those first soft, luscious fruits.
This far north, the sensory delights of summer are all too few. I should be out there every day, playing in the dirt.
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Love your lyrical prose. Lots of rain in your former South Jersey home this spring>
Thanks! And no doubt that rain rose from the soaked ground, to be reborn as humidity. That’s one thing I don’t miss about the East Coast.
I compromise by wearing just one glove. That way I can rest on the gloved hand or use it to pull thistles while the other hand does the detail work. I wish I could say that I came up with the idea myself, but the reality is I just lost my other gardening glove last year and haven’t gotten around to replacing it yet!
Beautifully said! My feelings exactly.
Thank you.
mea Curad indeed!
Glad that someone caught that!
I stumbled over “Mea Curad” reading “mea Culpe” since that was what I was expecting. Very clever! Rhubarb is $4.99/lb in the store. It won’t grow here–too warm.
I meant “culpa.”