Solar Eclipse?

Last Monday, North America was abuzz with news of a solar eclipse...

Toronto's outdoor public swimming pools will be closed during the time of the eclipse, my daughter informed me. They expect the city to get dark for a while...

Oh no! I'd better go out while it's daylight, I thought...

How to know that there's an eclipse without looking at the sun? I wondered. By shadows, of course!

So I took a picture of the backyard shadows of my flowers at the beginning of the eclipse. My plan was to take others at its peak and again at the end...

I was gone for about an hour... In that time, there was no darkness. The sky was a little hazy perhaps - but not dark.

Not wanting to look at the sun, I quickly snapped a picture through the window of my car.

When I got back home, the backyard shadows had lengthened. The afternoon was quickly passing by.

I didn't get a photo of the peak of the eclipse...

But I did realize that my "scientific method" was flawed: A cloud blocking the sun could also take the shadows away!