{"id":644,"date":"2004-12-29T18:26:18","date_gmt":"2004-12-30T01:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/a_bit_of_trivia\/"},"modified":"2004-12-29T18:26:18","modified_gmt":"2004-12-30T01:26:18","slug":"a_bit_of_trivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/a_bit_of_trivia\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bit of Trivia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, in the part of the United States known as the Greater Chicagoland area (and probably the rest of the Northern Hemisphere), we received thirty-three more seconds of sunlight.  I don&#8217;t know if each day from now to the solstice in June will have thirty three more seconds of light, but each extra second is precious.<br \/>\nI was surfing to find just how short our day is on the solstice, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/wiltshire\/weather\/solstice_2003.shtml\">this site<\/a> says that their day is seven hours and fifty minutes, while <a href=\"http:\/\/seattlepi.nwsource.com\/nwgardens\/204674_wingate23.html\">this site <\/a>says their day will be eight hours and fifteen minutes.  Clearly, it matters what your latitude is, in determining just how little sunlight you get.  It&#8217;s interesting to note that we do not gain an equal number of seconds of light due to earlier sunrises and later sunsets.<br \/>\n<ahref=\"http:\/\/seattlepi.nwsource.com\/nwgardens\/204674_wingate23.html\">This site<\/a> has an explanation of how the Earth&#8217;s tilt, and the elliptical orbit of the planet around the sun cause a difference close to the time of the solstices in the changes of sunrises and sunsets.  For about two weeks prior to the December 21st solstice the sun rises at the same time each day, while the sunset comes earlier and earlier.<br \/>\nAs a gardener, I long for the time when I can get back out into my gardens in the Spring.  I&#8217;ll be pushing it in March, when I go out to pick up fallen branches, and pull up dead plants that escaped my attention this fall.  Some of my gardening friends start plants from seed, just to have their fingers in the dirt.<br \/>\nA day or so before Christmas, I received my first plant catalog in the mail, so spring can&#8217;t be too far behind!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, in the part of the United States known as the Greater Chicagoland area (and probably the rest of the Northern Hemisphere), we received thirty-three more seconds of sunlight. I don&#8217;t know if each day from now to the solstice &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/a_bit_of_trivia\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/arrrgh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}