THE LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR

Today is June 20, 2012, the summer solstice, the longest day of this year.  Summer begins this evening.  Every year I think there should be some sort of celebration on the solstices, the longest and the shortest days, but they always seems to catch me unprepared.  One doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to give a party.  Oh, I guess one could, but this year, that won’t be practical.  For one thing, my mate and best friend has plans to meet one of his oldest friends.  They try to do that once a month, to keep in touch.  They talk about all sorts of things and never have a loss for words.  You know, the sort of conversation one can have with an old friend.

 But getting back to the solstice, on this longest day of the year, we rose earlier than usual to avoid too much sun and heat and did some tasks outside that we wanted and needed to do.  The early morning was been cloudy and breezy, quite nice when one is moving busily around the yard and garden.  It is humid, of course,  because this is Texas in the summer.  Because I/we have a mild addiction to certain tropical plants such as plumbago capensis and ixora (one red, one yellow) as well as bougainvillea, plus there are always small pots of something or other we’ve potted up for some reason or other, there is always a need to water pots at least twice a week and today was one of the days to do that.  And there was lawn to be mowed.  And the birds felt their feeder should be filled.  Because we are no longer young, we like to do such things leisurely.  Then we sit and have our second cup of coffee and admire what there is to admire.  Certainly the blue plumbago and the ixoras are repaying us with blooms.  Certainly the various other potted projects seem to be happy. 

And we can leisurely discuss things we want to do in the future, mostly plants that need to be moved from one spot to another.   In fact, my dear companion and spouse has commented more than once that perhaps he should plant garden plants on wheels, the easier to move them around.  It’s a joke, of course, but the nice thing about him is that he loves to see plants thrive and understands that sometimes we have chosen the wrong place for them to do that.

Well, even though we won’t be having a party on this solstice, we are still having a lovely day.  And a long one.