Today is the summer solstice. It normally falls on June 21st, though in 1975 it fell on 22nd June and next year it will be on 20th June. I was rather puzzled that my diary (W.H.Smith smallest and most basic pocket diary) said that midsummer day would be this Friday, June 24th. A quick whizz round the internet (where would we be without it) yielded the answer that midsummer day and the summer solstice, though often confused, don't have to fall on the same day and generally don't nowadays. The solstice is an astronomical phenomenon, being the point at which the sun is furthest from the celestial equator. This is according to the website of the National Maritime Museum, who ought to know, given they are host to the Royal Observatory and gave got John Harrison's chronometer. For myself, my eyes used to glaze over with boredom as a child when people tried to explain the relative movements of the sun, moon and planets using oranges and a ping-pong ball, and I haven't improved since so will not attempt to elaborate further.
Midsummer Day is a cultural construct. In northern Europe it falls on the feast of St John the Baptist which is 24th June, though the traditions of bonfires and fairies roaming abroad are pre-Christian. It is also one of the four legal quarter days of the year, along with Lady Day (25th March), Michaelmas (29th September) and Christmas Day (you know this one), when accounts were settled, rents paid and servants hired.
Nowadays there seems to be a fair amount of interchangeability between the two terms and I am not alone in my confusion e.g. the londonist website giving a preview of an early morning bike ride that took place today treated the summer solstice as synonymous with midsummer day. It doesn't really matter, not like less and fewer or disinterested and uninterested. I won't be writing to The Daily Telegraph. As a gardener, however, I note the turning point. Some plants need short days to flower, or rather, long nights, because if you give them a long period of darkness but turn the lights on briefly part way through this disrupts their behaviour. The favourite examples at horticultural college were chrysanthemums and poinsettia, both of which need long nights to stimulate flower production. Onions are day length sensitive, long day bulbs needing 14 to 16 hours of light to initiate bulb formation, while short day bulbs do it at 10 to 12 hours. I note this as an interesting scientific phenomenon, having never bothered growing onions myself when they are so cheap in the shops.
I don't find the shortening days depressing. The long days are beautiful, but the evenings are often warmer later in the summer, and I like sitting out on the veranda after dark listening to Glenn Miller drifting out through the open doors. I like autumn colour, and the first log fire, and making crab apple and rosehip jelly. I like asters and chrysanthemums and all the flowers of autumn.
Just at the moment things are not happening in their proper season, and that is down to the weather and nothing to do with day length. I normally pick the blackcurrants around the 7th to 9th July (I know because I write the date on the bags when I freeze them) but this year I started picking today. It's not a bumper crop, after the dry spring, but the flavour is good.
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