Round here, nature is at last doing autumn properly, instead of lazily slinging a cloudful of water our way and calling it a season.
Suddenly, it’s cold. Whatever time of day or evening you venture out, you can smell the wood-smoke from people’s log fires, and see ambitiously-stacked spider sanctuaries log-piles leaning against the walls of thatched cottages. In the evening, I pour a glass of red wine and sit down beside our own fire. Then, – more often than not – I immediately shriek and jump up again because I’ve accidentally sat on a spiky bit of Lego. (Thanks, twinnage.) Naturally, there is knitting involved in this part of the day, too. It’s good to relax after a hard time down the psychology mines*. Here’s tonight’s effort:-
Suddenly this past week or two, we’re surrounded by gorgeous fiery leafy colours, and the twinnage are asking important questions about the life cycle of trees. Well, one of them is: the one who has appointed himself Official Acquirer Of Twinnage Knowledge. His brother listens, quietly.
The boys are also asking anxious questions about Whether At Last It Will Snow This Winter, as they are still of an age where they think that their mum knows stuff and can answer these things.
I try to provide an answer that won’t eventually lead to that terrible accusation, “But Mummy, you said…”, whilst not entirely crushing hope (theirs or mine), and also hinting at how as a species, our reckless misuse of resources is making the climate turn a tiny bit wobblesome and changeable, thus rendering it impossible to reliably promise snow to six-year-olds if you’re anywhere south of the Arctic Circle. They frown, puzzled, and appear to mentally file my answer away under ‘Mummy’s weird rants about stuff’. (It’s a big file.)
Oh well.
I hope we do have snow this winter. And some pretty frost. You can remind me of that in a few months’ time when I’m grumbling about the veneer of ice on the inside of my bedroom window. (I used to think that I must have imagined memories of ice on the inside of the windows as a child, but then the winter after we moved here to the brewery, it happened.)
Anyway, mustn’t grumble. At least autumn gives you an excuse to wear all of your hand-knits at once.
∗ Job-related phrase sneakily stolen from the wit of Narf, cos I’m a plagiaristic thief.
What scrumptious photos. As I believe I’ve mentioned before, you are a lady of many talents!
It was such a beautiful evening that no talent whatsoever was required, I can assure you!
What stunning photos, especially the one with the twins in the distant. We’re still waiting for “real” fall weather, though we did get a bit of welcome rain last week. I can almost smell your wood-burning fires and I can certainly imagine the pile of wood. Here they’re also a free ride for termites. Alas, our air quality is terrible so wood burning stoves are no longer allowed in new builds, and are frequently banned during winter months because the air quality suffers. We removed our fireplace 12 years ago when we remodeled and replaced it with a 12 foot window instead. It makes me happy.
Autumn is the best time of year! I always get so jealous when the Northern hemisphere is heading into Autumn and all we have is rubbish spring. And yes, the flowers are pretty, but the pollen is malicious.
Enjoy the season ahead of you in all its mellow loveliness, especially with all of its attendant excuses to stay inside by a fire and knit.
Oh, no. I lived in England in 80s, and the one snow in January that froze up the whole country was on schedule. I’m so sorry this isn’t happening anymore!
XD Had a good laugh Glenda, I do remember that and though I shiver at the thought what climate change will bring us I do enjoy not getting stuck in the snow somewere in the middle of nowere.
Gorgeous pictures, Tangled, 10/10!
I actually secretly like this time of year the best of all in a way, as it’s not too lung-hurty to do ‘fresh air’ type stuff (still trying to run in Devon, but I’ve been curtailed by lurgy this week) and then come inside and make it cosy and adopt the sofa knitting position.
My 18 month old keeps sabotaging my knitting terribly at the moment, I can only do it when she’s asleep. It’s annoying as knitting / crochet with the 4 year old while he plays Lego is deemed perfectly acceptable by the 4 year old so long as I engage him in conversation about said Lego (i.e. nothing too complex on the needles/hook!). He is also craving snow this year. I’d quite like a bit, so long as I’m not stuck at work for too long! Proper UK Snow of 2012 had me stuck at work for a whole 2 days (well, one of them was an overnight on call, and then I had to cross Dartmoor to get home).
The only bit I really don’t like about this time of year is my epic commute to/ from NHS-land in the dark. That makes me sad It’s not for very long, though, before those days start lengthening again… Enjoy those beautiful colours, and the sofa/stove combo.
Want snow? Come visit Canada. I type this from just outside Toronto, Ontario…but even better for cold & snow is my daughter at university in Nova Scotia. You’ll be taking back your wish for snow after a few mornings of hacking the ice off your car window and then trying to get your cover over the huge pile of snow the street plow left at the end of your driveway. Although admittedly, it looks really pretty!
And here I was, merrily stealing the arse end out of ALL of those gorgeous autumn leaf images. I had visions of desktop-plum-fairies all dancing around in my head when suddenly, out of NO-WHERE Ms T goes and spoils it all by linking to my blog posts. Suddenly I am back where I started, having to pay penance for my sins and most probably failing my current course for not adhering to copyright policy. Bollocks! Actually (and here’s where my own brand of sneaky street psychology enters into the picture…) if you used “my” phrase in your blog post, surely that entitles me to use “your” lovely images on my desktop in the coming, no doubt HOT summer days to remind me that autumn is a given and will return again someday soon. While I am laying prostrate (better spell check that last word narf…) on the bathroom floor in the throes of summer sweat, I can rustle up a tiny shred of hope that someday, somehow, the cool of autumn and then the bloody-bollocking-cold of winter shall return.