The Longest Day

At long last, it's finally just about here: the longest day of the year. This is our "reward" for having to put up with the damp, cold, and very short days of December. To set the stage: sunrise tomorrow will be at 5:29AM and sunset just after 10PM. That's 16 and a half hours with Mr. Soleil. The birds are still chirping when it's nearly 11PM and, by 4:30 in the morning, they're at it again - short nights for them, that's for sure.
Compare this with, say, Washington D.C. There, the sun will come up just a few minutes later than here, but it sets by 8:40PM. Of course, it's all a question of latitude. Here we sit at nearly 51 degrees north. To put that in perspective, Baltimore is at 39 degrees; Boston at 42; and Quebec is at 46 degrees north. We are on the same latitude here in central Belgium as the southern edge of Hudson/James Bay, nearly 400 miles north of Montreal! I think about that every time I see the beautiful, locally-grown tomatoes and fruit...