Topsy turvey

Photo: Autumn fungi, walking track Hazelbrook

The calendar ticked over to autumn yesterday. I knew it was coming, the ginger flowers and belladonna lilies have been wafting perfume right on cue and the last of the summer butterflies are still dancing in the garden. But it doesn't feel like autumn -- that warm soft season between the harsh brightness of summer and stark bite of winter. All this summer cool, grey, damp days poised on the edge of sunny heat that never quite arrived.

Without the summer, the normally thankful blessing of cooling mist only brings fear that the dull days will drag on month after month. What cantankerous people we are when things get out of kilter -- this time last year we were praying for rain after endless seasons of too dry weather. Back then the dam was just 35% full, now it is 60% and rising.

My fellow bloggers in the northern hemisphere are longing for a change from the dreary whiteness of winter at the same time as posting shot after delightful shot of snowy fields and icy rivers.

Another weird thing, since I stopped posting to this blog it gets more subscribers and more visitors than ever before. And since I am talking of things out of season today I thought I would quote this poem which I like a lot but have not used because we don't see much winter snow in the mountains and our forests are evergreen. Welcome the strangeness!

Words to walk with:
Spring Pools by Robert Frost
"These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods---
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday."