June - my favorite month

By Victoria Abbott aka Mary Jane and Victoria Maffini

June is my favorite month.   It’s the time when I have finally managed to forget about winter. Hard as it is to believe, I enjoy winter from December 1^st to January 15^th, but that will be the subject of another post. Our summers here just outside Canada’s capital are very hot and very humid.

We also have here in the Ottawa Valley the finest collection of ancient strains of ragweed in the world. There is so much ragweed that pharmaceutical companies use this area to test hay fever medications.  So August is not a favorite month. Again, this is a topic for another post.  

But now it's June and I'm in heaven.  I'm happy to see and hear the happy little pollinators on the job. Can you see him?

Even though I enjoy a great deal about summer (minus hay fever) the more moderate days of June are the best for me. I put it down to my Celtic heritage.  Our temperature as I write this is about 75 with a light breeze and dappled early evening sun.  A stroll outside to get the mail also involves stopping to admire the peonies, finally blooming 'bigtime' and begging to be snipped for vases.

Bless their little pink hearts. 

Not only that but the first rose buds are showing up.  This one is a climbing rose and it managed to survive its first very rough winter.

But the thing I love best about June is the length of the days.  The sun will rise at 5:14 and will set at 8:54 tomorrow night.  That will stretch to 8:56 on June 21, the Summer Solstice.  In our neck of the woods, that will give us six hours and fifty-eight minutes more light than the Winter Solstice on December 21.  Yippee! I revel in it. 

 Some of our Northern Canadian communities will be light until after eleven or in the far north, all night, but I’ll still take what I can get.  Even though my husband can never resist saying the morning of June 22nd that now the days are starting to get shorter.  

All that light is good for my happiness. I love to be able to sit outside and watch the sun come up  and in the evening to watch the sunsets. 

 But perhaps best of all is the magical period known as twilight, 

 morning or evening, when the world seems wonderful and mysterious, where anything can happen. A repeat trip outside once it’s actually night can be magical too.  Last night we watched the wispy clouds pass in front of the two dippers.  We love that feeling of being small humans staring out at the cosmos. We love just sitting, being and seeing. We know that we’re lucky.  Go ahead, give me a hard time, because you can't take a picture of them with my little digital camera.. Use your imagination!

Trust me; they're out there twinkling!

We enjoy it so much that a bit of star-watching worked its way into The Marsh Madness, the book collector mystery coming in September.  One of the scenes has an ‘illuminating’ moment.

The neighbors may think we’re crazy if they hear us outside at all odd hours, but we know that in June, the best things in life are free.  

Some of you are from areas where June is pretty hot and sticky. But come and tell us what month or weather you do enjoy wherever you are and if you have a favorite time of day or night.  June is open to all, of course, but I’d love to hear your take on it.