Finally the summer arrived in mid February. From the beginning of October to the middle of February we had only 3 rainless days, so when the summer finally began we appreciated it like never before! Once again we are spending lazy afternoons in the scorching sun picking wild blackberries and apples, listening to choruses of cicadas singing their hearts out, wandering the dusty roads in bare feet, splitting load after load of sweet smelling firewood and lying on sun soaked beds listening to 1940's jazz. Christmas seems a distant memory, days are getting the tiniest but shorter, tired hydrangeas are drooping heavily after months of blooming. The leaves are beginning to look tired, the air has the familiar feel of autumn to it, hay and silage are being mowed hurriedly, chainsaws hum in the distance, a sure sign everyone is feeling the air of autumn descending. We lost our beloved bunnies Lotus and Morel this summer, they both suddenly became ill and left us quickly, and we all miss their wee faces popping up all over the place, they are sleeping peacefully under the rhododendron tree, and none of us have the heart to fill their places with new bunnies.
In just a few weeks we enter our third season here, hard to believe another year has come and gone already! Jeremy hasn't realised it yet, but one more class day and he is halfway through his training! The squirelling of firewood in preparation for winter naturally means we have decided to stay on for another season, a relief in that there will be no packing and shifting, but I am already anxious about spending another winter so isolated and so incredibly exposed to every fearsome winter storm; the house rattling and shaking in howling gales, windows smashing, roofs blown off and lightening strikes sizzling appliances, God knows I will be relieved when we finally do more to a less volatile climate! For now though, summer days are warm and sweet and autumn chores are happy ones!
No comments:
Post a Comment