Lingering Daylight

We are smack in the middle of the time of year that I spend a lot of mental effort in the winter hoping to see.   And though large parts of the rest of the country, especially its midsection, have been having a painful time of it, with numerous tornadoes and floods and with a drought or two thrown in, as usual here we have been completely sheltered from anything extreme, so that a gulley-washer or a tornado in North Carolina or in Oklahoma is just a gentle, quiet downpour here.  I always credit that mostly to the north to south-running string of mountains that lie directly to the west.
 
It's been a cool and at times even a cold spring, but there were no late frosts to nip things in the bud, especially tulip poplar and other tree blossoms, and in fact this spring has been unusually generous with the rain, and now we feel like we are in a big bowl of green, making us and everything we do outside really invisible from the road.

One of the best things about this time of the year is the length of the days.   It starts getting light well before six in the morning, and fifteen hours later, at nine at night, there is still just enough light left for my little treks here and there outside.

I know that won't last long.   The solstice in June is right around the corner, and may even happen tomorrow, the way that time goes by so fast for me.   But I'm trying in this post to do something that isn't done often enough, and that is to show the proper appreciation for what we have hoped for, when it is finally here.