The Gentle Days of Winter

Here in Ottawa, we have come to the gentle days of winter - when we lose only about a minute of daylight per day.

These days - the six weeks before and after December 21 - time almost stands still. There's only about a minute a day of variation in length of daylight hours. 

For a week or so, there is may be a slight variation of time of day - a minute here and there of change - but the total number of hours and minutes of daylight remains the same.

Then daylight will slowly increase, starting with a minute a day - in mid-January - before the sun begins to canter, then gallop towards summer and we gain 2 and 3 minutes of sunlight a day. 

I find this annual "dance" of the earth around the sun so fascinating! I sometimes wish I had studied geography and meteorology as my major, instead of languages and literature!