Sunrise, sunset

One of the nice things about living where we do is that we get good views of both sunrise and sunset every day. My friend Evelyn pointed that out to me one day, years ago. Sometimes I grab my camera and take a photo through a window from inside at those hours. Often, skies like the one on the right disappear quickly as the sun rises or wind blows the clouds away. According to the timestamp on it, I took this picture at 7:50 a.m. It was still too dark outside to start the morning walk with the dog.

At about 5:30 p.m., I happened to glance out the window and I saw this sunset. It had rained on and off all day. Hours later, I heard hard rain pelting down on the roof tiles and skylight windows as I tried to get some sleep up in the loft. It's been very windy for about 36 hours as well.

This third image shows the view through the linden tree out back a minute or so later. Today, the sun will rise here in Saint-Aignan at 8:29 a.m. and it will set at 5:06 p.m. That give us just 8½ hours of daylight, and it is dim daylight when rain is falling. It's hard for me to imagine living farther north than this. We are farther north than Quebec City, at about the same latitude as Seattle. In Aberdeen, in Scotland, for example — almost as far north as Juneau in Alaska  — the sun will rise at 8:34 this morning and will set at 3:26 p.m. That's a seven hour day. Evening starts there in mid-afternoon.