Autumn showing off....

The summer has been mild, as if the autumn was in the background, already looking to enter our hemisphere but unsure of the welcome it would receive and by it's presence holding the summer season in check, cramping it so the hot weather couldn't grow and play havoc. Though it was different in different states and some were very hot and dry.

The birds drank at the baths placed out for them and the sheep did as well, depleting the bird baths several times a day when the sun was strongest. Water was scarce, but not so scarce that we couldn't share it with those who came into the garden area expecting to find a little to drink and wet their plumage.

The autumn is true to form, wonderful in light and temperature and as yet it doesn't appear to be getting cooler, though I imagine the first rain from now will deliver the cooler weather as well and it'll be resident from that point on. However, we have no complaint, the world is greener than we are accustomed to seeing it at this time of year and we rejoice.

Light and Dark

I have just come in from the night but it wasn't dark. Here, on the edge of a northern city, street lamps outshine the moon on pavements packed hard with over three weeks of unmelted snow, tonight crunchy and everywhere peppered with the patterns of a thousand soles. A few years ago, in deep country, it was my pleasure to venture out in the moonlight to make tunnels for my cat through a thick blanket only occasionally crisscrossed by the pads of badger and fox.

Two of our older neighbours are still waiting to leave their front doors. I bring them milk and bread, brussels sprouts and papers and eggs and they tell me in low tones of all their friends and relatives who have somehow lost their lives in the past few months. I feel that in this long winter spell knowledge of their own frailty has crept very close.

Our granddaughters bounce in and then out again like two great puppies now, with flying hair and long shaggy-fringed coats. Their laughter fills the little garden as they leap on heaps of snow and slither along the paths. I hope the neighbours are smiling behind half-open blinds.