The Days of Light
“Glory be to God for dappled things.” – Gerard Manley Hopkins
The day is extended.
Another chance to work the fields until the first star flickers above the tree line.
Or is it a firefly? A blinking light of joy as the sun sets in the east.
The dark never rushes in at this time of year,
Night and day linger in the doorway,
Two old friends catching up, saying Sleep well and
See you tomorrow and How was the day,
and Are you doing alright?
The day is golden, from that jewel-toned morning light stretching her limbs all the way to the golden half-light that kisses my children’s cheeks and warms the wing of the monarch as she goes from milkweed leaf to milkweed stem, giving her young a place to grow. The light splits through the dandelion puffs, the Queen Anne’s Lace, and the tall grass in the field.
It curves around the old trees, ripens the fruit, and sends cotton candy clouds into the twilight as if to give her old friend a midnight snack before she calls it a day.
The day is long, giving us a leisurely dinner hour where the dogs run around as we drink lemonade and push the swing and listen to Bill Withers sing about the lovely day. The molasses-like sunshine gives us more time for the fire, for stories, for running barefoot around the field and the barn a few more times, catching fireflies in a jar, tossing cookies up to the bats as they swoop low, and listening to the cicada song as the world drifts off to sleep.
The daylight is a tumbling ball down the hill, bouncing further than you’d think it will go, somehow reaching its end and going on. “What time is it?” someone asks incredulously. “10:08 p.m.,” another replies and it’s still light enough to see each other’s faces and the sticky residue of s’mores on my son’s hands as he climbs into my husband’s lap.
The sunflowers still lean toward the west as the golden light drops below the horizon. The soil is still warm. We can still pick honey peas and point out the hidden pumpkins and check for blushing tomatoes before we go inside.
The day arrives early and stays late and I cannot rest.
The sun calls to me as a sage, calling from the window ledge.
Wisdom calling in the street telling me it’s time to rise.
There is no rest. The garden needs water and overnight the weeds have grown and that handbasket is full of seeds I have yet to sow.
With one post in morning and the other at midnight, I spend my days swinging and kicking in summer wonder and weariness.
Morning is for the flowers, for the water drops filling the birdbath and scattering in a full shower over the beds.
Midnight is for garlic—cleaning, brushing, tying, and pulling dry garlic stem splinters out of my fingertips.
The remnants of the day are long gone as I sweep up a pile of dried garlic stalks, ready to return in just four hours.
I can already hear her humming in the distance.
These are the days of light, when the sun shines for all those who cannot find their way, for all those who work the fields, who plant for the harvest, water for the harvest, and reap the harvest.
These are the days of hope and there is still time for more to join in the song of the Sower.
Soon the scythe will swing, the patient arms of the vinedresser will prune for the last time, the threshing floor will be clean, the beds will be empty, the feast will begin and we will never know night again.
Cultivate
Rise early at the first light of the longest day. Use every ounce of daylight you have to weed, plant, harvest, and prune. Join in the work of the long garden days. These days are not unlimited and it’s the best time to redeem those extra hours—in the garden, with your family, your community, and your local church. Watch the golden light at dawn and watch it settle back down at night. Water in the mornings and later at night when it’s not hot. Harvest before the sun hits a quarter of the way up in the sky. Water your fall garden. Weed what shouldn’t remain. Give thanks for the gift of long days and sun.
Excerpt from Andrea Burke’s A Bit of Earth: A Year in the Garden with God. Used with permission by Lexham Press, 2024).