CHERISH THE TIME

By SUSAN SMITH-DURISEK

Sundials cast beautiful garden shadows

Sundials range from a stick in the ground to elaborate works of art.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — We live in a constantly changing world, but each day, one thing remains the same: The sun rises in the east and sets in the west — although not in exactly the same spot on the horizon.

Summer holds the longest day of the year, when the sun rises and falls to the extreme north end of east and west, tracing a high arc in the sky.

The sun seems to stand still briefly, then, almost undetectably, it begins creeping farther and farther south, until reaching the shortest day of the year about Dec. 21, when the winter solstice sun rises and sets farthest south, staying low in the sky.

Sundials have marked those daylight hours for thousands of years, casting shadows that moved to tell the time as the sun’s position changed relative to the Earth. They take on many forms: flat horizontal or vertical dial plates with numbered faces, spherical armillary globes and other irregular shapes. A raised bar called a gnomon is angled up from the face to cast a shadow on the dial.

Sundials range from a plain stick in the ground to elaborate works of art and complex, finely calibrated structures. A sundial can create a sculptural focus for garden settings.

They can be found all over the world, sometimes in unexpected places.

In France, the spire of Mont St. Michel cathedral on a small coastal island casts a shadow more than a half-mile long at times, reaching numerals in the surrounding sands and water. At the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, dolphin tails point to the hours, and a fine collection of pocket sundials, used before mechanical watches were invented, can be found in the historical collection.

Here’s some information on a few Central Kentucky sundials:

UThe oldest one that can be found nearby is at a house built by settler Samuel Taylor on Shawnee Run Creek in Mercer County. The home was renamed Bachelor’s Barter by James Coger, the first curator at Colonial Williamsburg and a Shakertown president. He had managed a land swap for the property that he restored as his home. Jim Thomas, also a former Shakertown president, has continued preserving and updating the house, which he hopes to open to the public.

The stone structure has a vertical sundial that resembles a millstone set in the south wall over the front door. Inscribed in the stone are the initials S.T., the year 1790, and the message, “Look to your laws instead of your progenitors for your inheritance.”

Taylor, having served in the American Revolution, subsequently moved from Virginia during a time when the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written. He was instrumental in creating Kentucky’s constitutions, so the inscription was befitting a person involved in outlining citizens’ rights.

The house is aligned with its long front face going east-west, the sundial facing south like a gem in a perfect setting, allowing direct symmetry in the hour-line placements.

UHistoric Waveland is a representation of plantation life in the mid-1800s. It once was the home and horse farm of Daniel Boone’s great-nephew Joseph Bryan, whose family helped establish Bryan’s Station. The Greek revival mansion, just off Nicholasville Road near Man o’ War Boulevard, has been preserved to share a wealth of Bluegrass heritage.

The home’s herb garden, maintained by the Down to Earth Garden Club, includes a sundial tucked between coral bells and lavender.

ULook inside the walled formal garden at Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate, to find a sundial that belonged to Clay’s granddaughter Anne Clay McDowell, who planted gardens about 1900 after buying the estate. Members of the Garden Club of Kentucky placed her sundial in an updated enclosure among the parterres and roses.

To highlight McDowell’s Victorian style, club members set the horizontal dial in front of a whimsical topiary backdrop depicting visitors enjoying a tea party. The dial reads simply: “Time is valuable.”

UInscribed on the enormous sundial at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial plaza in Frankfort, Ky.: “A time to be born and a time to die.” That, and the names of about 1,100 Kentuckians killed or missing in Vietnam, are arranged on the monument so that the shadow of the 25-foot gnomon touches their names on the anniversaries of their deaths.

Helm Roberts, the architect who designed the memorial, was trained in celestial navigation as a naval officer, becoming familiar with the relationship of time and location to the sun and stars.

“The idea for a monumental sundial was originally intended to be a feature in [Lexington’s] Woodland Park, a sundial large enough to see the movement of the shadow,” said Roberts, who also hoped to mark special dates with the memorial.

The project exceeded the city’s budget and was never realized.

When a design competition for the Frankfort memorial was held in 1987, Roberts submitted his design. The layout was complex, but Roberts says, “Fortunately, the personal computer was available to handle the mathematical calculations previously worked out on a slide rule.”

UIn 1997, when neighbors on Lexington’s Glendover Cove needed something to replace the messy catalpa tree in the center of their cul-de-sac, they decided on a floral sundial. Erwin Jones managed the plant selection and maintenance. Sam Moore created the layout, using a classic analemmic design, which tracks the sun’s figure-eight path along each marker throughout the year and is accurate within five minutes of standard time during the summer months.

“What better than a sundial to help you understand time and place? It’s distinctive, and we had fun doing it while involving many people,” Moore said.

UIn 2004, Second Presbyterian Church’s Presbyterian Women group contributed a sundial to the congregation’s new garden and courtyard area at 460 East Main Street in Lexington. It’s a bronze reproduction of the horizontal dial created for George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, before 1785.

Another gift to all of us who are confounded by sundial requirements and time-adjustments is the clear, concise explanation and diagrams provided on the group’s Web site, www.2preslex.org.