4:46 Eastern Standard Time at the Capitol Columns and the sun is still up

You can't exactly see it because I positioned myself so that it was behind a Capitol Column capital. Oops. It's a good thing that the sun's moving higher in the sky and staying up longer. I'm not so sure about the 65F high temperature we had today, the last day of January. We're all enjoying the warmth with some trepidation....waiting to see whether winter will arrive and wreak havoc on all the plants softened by this unusual warmth, or whether the whole year will be warmer. Gardeners are glass-half-empty kind of people.

From the second to the thirteenth of December, the sun set at 4:46 EST. Since then it has pushed back incrementally so that today it set at 5:28. That's real progress towards longer days. Unfortunately at the other end of the day (sunrise) we haven't seen that same energy and initiative. The worst, I mean the latest, sunrise was 7:27 EST; the sun rose at the time from December 31 last year to January 11 this year. Wow. Over the past almost three weeks we've gained all of 11 minutes. Sheesh.

Still it's nice to not have to rush out at 4:30 to get home before dark. And, starting tomorrow, we gain 2 full minutes of daylight every day.