Autumn leaves

Well, it would be nice if it did. Leave, I mean. It would then be nice if winter left as well. But no, I have another four months of this sort of joyous weather to get down and dirty with before there’s any chance of a crack in the grey sky to let through a beam of sunlight.

This is the worst part of the autumn weather. In winter there’s the promise of icy mornings and clear crisp air. There’s the first signs that the whole shebang is coming to an end when the daffodils poke their green sprouts up through the frozen earth and announce that it’s time to move on, buddy. A new season is in town.

Still, there’s some beauty to be had along with the constant shivering.

Today, I watched a flock of leaves fly across the sky, swooping and diving and circling in unison. Our patchy lawn has disappeared beneath a colourful display of yellow, brown, and brilliant red. Dead leaves are now sheltering all that weeding I never got around to, from sight.

Holy s**t. An earthquake. No, literally. Right now. Hold on for a minute and I’ll get you a Richter scale reading…

4.7 and it was only 7km deep so it has a Mercalli scale of 6.

Phew. Well, that got the heart going right before bedtime and now my darling has to listen to the news every half hour until he receives confirmation that earthquakes in Christchurch still make it onto the national news framework.

Yay. A long, sleepless night ahead.