There has always been something vividly appealing about the summer solstice.

The Swedes celebrate midsommar, and all my calendars list the phrase summer begins on this day, the 21st of june. As an avid planner, i am not ashamed to admit i have thought about conceiving my future children so they'd all be born on the first day of summer. A grand celebration of life and light if ever there was one. There is clearly no natural way to make that happen, but indeed i have thought about it.

I love this day.

Everyone's been claiming summer days since the weeks leading up to memorial day, but i secretly hold out to declare the season until this day: the longest day of the year. There are places on this earth that hardly get an hour of sunlight some parts of the year, but on these days, in this hemisphere, we are blessed with gloriously long daylight hour. Days when the streetlights take longer to come on. Days when you lose your sense of time because the sun it still hanging out overhead. Days meant for extra SPF, extra time at the pool and extra extra time spent close to the shore, if you are lucky enough to be near. Today is the longest we'll see see the sun in one twelve hour stretch... until next year.

I love this day.

Happy first day of summer.