I love summer, apart from clothing decisions, given that I am overweight. I've settled on mid thigh tunics and just below the knee leggings! 😊
I am really, really trying to conjure up reliable memories of bright, cool, crisp autumn mornings, of wood smoke, bejewelled cobwebs, turning leaves - and maybe old spinsters cycling to Evensong; but nope.
Much of autumn, in even southern Hampshire is grey. Grey marching skies, damp air, wind; drizzle. The odd day as described above is a rare jewel, yes, to be treasured, but surely not to define a season?
I am a gardener, and, as such, I sense the changing of the year, a feel, a smell in the air as Sylvia Plath's green fuse is lit. I watch the urgency of my garden fight its way to life, abundance and fecundity. Then, even, sometimes in late August, certainly by late Sept, the melancholy air of decay, death, passing seeps over the land. The massive low pressure systems, the rain depressions mass in the Atlantic, the reducing of us to a small island nation huddling and hunkering down against the wet, the rain, the wind, the grey of winter overcoming us.
My north Devonian mother used to describe it like 'living under a damp rock'.
Give me Central European weather, any time. Hot, dry, reliable, blue-skied summers; cold, snowy, dry, still, blue-skied winters.