It's here!

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water. ~Carl Reiner

It's official. I have a jumper on while waiting for the sun to rise; Autumn is here.

Autumn is my favourite time of the year. There are the purely practical joys. The colder weather kills of the mozzies & sandflies. This is good, believe me, as both are in plague proportions during summer. No~one has to worry about how much clothing they can safely remove before they become completely immodest. Trust me on this one. When the thermometer is nudging 100F & the humidity is in the 80% range clothing is not something anyone wants too much of. We don't have aircon which is bad for the environment & bad for people. Those of us who like to snuggle under a doona at night can do so without fear of melting into a damp puddle. Walking anywhere actually starts to look attractive again & a hot meal is welcome.

There are aesthetic pleasures too. Issi is fluffing up his coat & looking like the cattiest of cats while his nose twitches appreciatively. He can stop being confused temporarily. No longer does he need to seek that elusive patch of sunshine in front of the whirring fan; he can just seek the sunshine & bake luxuriously. The smell of rendering soup pervades the house & the girls' heads are bent over the cookbooks choosing sweet treats to fill the house with warmth & good food.

Now I know in some places Autumn announces its arrival with a pretty turning of the leaves until only bare twigs remain to greet the winter but Autumn is far more subtle this close to the Tropic of Capricorn. If you didn't know you might even miss it until the sudden & unexpected arrival of winter. There is a certain crispness in the air first thing in the morning & a delightful whiff of dampness. Only those who have experienced the hot, dusty mornings of an Australian summer can truly appreciate this. The haze of summer is replaced with a sharp crystalline quality & the leached colours become rich & true.

And if, as we do, you live in the midst of bushland there comes with a changing of the seasons a changing of the guard. Some birds hang around all year ~ the kookaburras & magpies, the curlews & lapwings. Other birds, being migratory, come & go with the seasons. The jeweled rainbow birds that came with the spring have departed south & north. This is the demarcation line for them. The rollers have gone too. Soon the black swans will arrive to winter on the bay. These small changes give me inordinate pleasure.

Now is the time for yard work, to plant & dig, to prune & coddle so that everything is well established before it has to brave the delights of a hot Australian summer. As the heat eases it is so much easier to get stuck into the school work, Ditz & I snuggled up together reading or doing map work, Iss thrumming like a heater over our feet. He knows how to find the Good Life!

This is the time of year I make time for the occasional walk through the mangroves with the dappled water oozing sleekly between the grey trunks, the soft, muted colours marbling the surface, the silence so deep, so profound that the whir of honeyeater wings sounds like a gunshot. It is in the silence too that the voice of God sounds loudest.