In a few days we will arrive at the Summer Solstice. Around where I grew up we generally referred to it as "Midsummer" even though it isn't actually the middle of the summer which doesn't occur until sometime in late July.
I've always had fairly fond memories of this time of the year, in part because as a kid it was when we were out of school, and our time was our own.
In my case, I would usually be sent off to live at my auntie's house because my parents were getting ready to go on some trip that they didn't really want to have a kid along for.
Of course I was really OK with that because most of the places my parents liked to go were pretty much "adults only" and spending time at my aunt's summer house out in the country was actually a treat and a welcome break from a fairly rigid home routine.
One of the things I always remember fondly about this time of the year in Denmark was how long the days were and how short the nights were. For all intents and purposes, there wasn't any real night... even at 2:00 AM you could look towards the north and even though the sun was definitely below the horizon, the sky was golden and pink.
We actually have about a four-week period centered around the Solstice during which it never gets any darker than you can still tell colors outside.
Of course the "price" you pay for that is that it works exactly the opposite when you're in the middle of winter! Shortly before Christmas I would go to school in the dark and I would come home from school in the dark.
Summer always meant strawberry season and I suppose that is a confession that perhaps my most favorite thing we grow in our garden is fresh strawberries. There is absolutely no comparison between eating a strawberry that comes off the vine and eating a strawberry that was bought in a box from the store where it had previously spent a week being transported on the truck and stored in some warehouse.
It was during the summers of my childhood that I developed a appreciation for fresh homegrown food.
My parents were by no means "hippie dippie" types but we did have a very large vegetable garden. By "large" I mean the piece of land that would be being used for our vegetable garden was originally intended to be a tennis court. So if you visualize a typical county park tennis court with its margins and fence around it that was the size of our vegetable garden.
For all their other faults my parents did teach me a lot about growing things and they developed the interest in me when I was quite young, by giving me my own little sub-patch of land within the bigger garden to grow my own little patch of vegetables.
This love of growing things and being outside was further developed by the summers I spent at my auntie's house where there was also lots and lots of edible stuff grown.
As I sit here, all these years later, it is a part of my upbringing I really appreciate, and it is standing us in good stead as we continue to do our urban homesteading experiment here at our place.
Our first strawberries are almost ripe. Their flavor will remind me of those good and distant days...
Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your weekend!
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Created at 2024-06-16 00:35 PDT
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