After a week’s hiatus, this 35th post in the Wednesday Wonderment series. As today provided a rather spectacular sunrise, I thought that today’s wonderment should be Morning.
While not all of us are morning people, I do think that each of us do enjoy the onset of a brand new day, even if it is just as an indication that we’ve made it to another day! As I do enjoy beautiful sunrises, but am not always an early riser, I try to make sure that I get my quota of sunrise images during this season , when sunrise is not too early for my taste.

Etymology
The name (which comes from the Middle English word morwening) was formed from the analogy of evening using the word “morn” (in Middle English morwen), and originally meant the coming of the sunrise as evening meant the beginning of the close of the day. The Middle English morwen dropped over time and became morwe, then eventually morrow, which properly means “morning”, but was soon used to refer to the following day (i.e., “tomorrow”), as in other Germanic languages—English is unique in restricting the word to the newer usage. The Spanish word “mañana” has two meanings in English: “morning,” and “tomorrow,” along with the word “morgen” in Dutch and German which also means both “morning,” and “tomorrow.” Max Weber, (General Economic History, pp23) states that the English word “morning” and the German word “Morgen” both signify the size of land strip “which an ox could plow in a day without giving out”. “Tagwerk” in German, and “a day’s work” in English mean the same. A Good morning in this sense might mean a good day’s plow.
Significance for Humans
Some languages that use the time of day in greeting have a special greeting for morning, such as the English good morning. The appropriate time to use such greetings, such as whether it may be used between midnight and dawn, depends on the culture’s or speaker’s concept of morning.
Morning typically encompasses the (mostly menial) prerequisites for full productivity and life in public, such as bathing, eating a meal such as breakfast, dressing, and so on. It may also include information activities, such as planning the day’s schedule or reading a morning newspaper. The boundaries of such morning periods are by necessity idiosyncratic, but they are typically considered to have ended on reaching a state of full readiness for the day’s productive activity. For some, the word morning may refer to the period immediately following waking up, irrespective of the current time of day. This modern sense of morning is due largely to the worldwide spread of electricity, and the concomitant independence from natural light sources.
The morning period may be a period of enhanced or reduced energy and productivity. The ability of a person to wake up effectively in the morning may be influenced by a gene called “Period 3”. This gene comes in two forms, a “long” and a “short” variant. It seems to affect the person’s preference for mornings or evenings. People who carry the long variant were over-represented as morning people, while the ones carrying the short variant were evening preference people.
Technical Details
This image was captured using an iPhone 6S with the standard camera app.
My favorite time of day..☀️