Seasoning

Yoshi, the Bwoston connection, has often been heard to comment that Sydneysiders don't know what seasons are. Pah, I'd tell her. Pah. Of course we do. There is summer, not-summer and bushfire season. Summer starts during your exam period (anywhere from HSC trials to uni finals) or stuvac, when you have to study but all you want to do is go to the beach, and runs until Anzac day, when Dad decides that 19 degrees is cold enough to light the fire with the wood he has been carefully stock piling since last not-summer. Outside Sydney summer finishes earlier to accommodate the campers: on the Easter long weekend with freezing nights and lots of rain. Not-summer is the rest of the year, and bushfire season comes in the middle of summer.

But lo and behold, Yoshi may be right. I'm discovering this season called autumn. We saw a bit of spring when we arrived, but not having been through the long winter preceding it didn't have quite the same impact. Autumn has come with a bang. Apparently we had an unusually nice summer extended by an unseasonable warm September. I noticed the leaves starting to change towards the end of summer which I thought was a bit pre-emptive. But clearly they knew better, because sure enough since the 22nd of September it has been consistently cooler, wetter and darker. About half the trees have started to shed exposing the crows' nests, the squirrels are so very busy, I am leaving for work in the gloom and it is almost dark again by the time I get home, and of course there is the constant wind.

But at least our friend the Aussie dollar has been kind to us, so baby can afford a new pair of shoes (and a jacket, and jeans, a beanie, gloves, scarves, and a couple of jumpers...).