How high is it?

Sun lingering low in the Southern Sky

Those who live in the Southern climates have the company of the sun year round. In the Great North West and some places north , the sun has a wild mood. In the summer it is frolicking till the late hours with dark coming well past 10PM. In the winter the sun barely crawls to 19 degrees above the horizon.  This could explain the lingering and piling of the snow in the winter. Then the tilt of the earth swings wildly back toward the Sun for the Northern Hemisphere  in March and April in anticipation of the warm season. What does it matter how high the sun climbs? Since we are part of Nature ( not just watching ) we have as a humans developed a close relationship with the Sun. The sun via vitamin D regulates our bone growth, immune system, and chronic illnesses. In fact sunshine influences expression of 10 % of our genes. So when the sun is less than 50 degrees on the horizon the rays are not able to shoot enough UVB rays to us to create Vitamin D the way mother nature intended. Here on the 48th parallel we only have 5 hours of above 50 degree sun on Summer Soltice. Sadly today the sun has only climbed to 19.6 degrees. Thanks sun good effort but no cigar. How do we know how high the sun climbs in our area? The US Navy has a website that allows you to calculate where the sun is positioned for your latitude. That being said once you find the availability of a natural source of vitamin D you can decide on supplementing . Dr Mercola has some informative reading on vitamin D replacement.

Two of the six Turkey friends

One of the fun things of being off from work and home is watching the local traffic. Earlier in the day a flock of  about 6 turkeys tromped through the yard. They seemed to loathe the deep snow and made their way slowly through the woods sinking up to their turkey "knees". I caught them on their way back through closer to sunset. I am still watching for something different than the usual deer tracks . With the abundant game surely mr cat is somewhere in the area.