Omega

Omega. I realised tonight that's the brand of heater I pull out this time every year. How fitting a ritual for farewelling the summer and facing a harsh winter. Admitedly, not so harsh when you're snuggled inside with a heater, but certainly a bit of a shock for two Sydneysiders facing a Canberra winter for the first time in four years. I love the cold days but I'm not sure I'll ever get used to that life-threatening moment when you step out of the shower on a below-zero morning.

Anyway, I have been most remiss with the Autumn photos - Canberra is looking its best this time of year but sadly I have been too busy galavanting about to get many decent pictures. So these will do:

Post-mortem

Autumn, autumn
The sad and cold post mortem
The things we did last summer that we'll never do again

I wish I could remember the rest of this poem by Michael Leunig. It so sums my life up at the moment. I have had a gloriously indulgent 6 months off from work to enjoy the summer, but now that autumn's here and winter is on its way I have remembered that I have to go and get a job, and this little daydream has to end. There's lots of earning to be done so that we can buy a new house and settle ourselves fully into domestic bliss.

Autumn is my favourite time of year. It's the time I first started celebrating the seasons as a pagan, and it's also a time of the year whose themes most apply to my life in general. Autumn is a time to reflect and let go of the past, both good and bad - something I've never found easy to do. But I also love that autumn is a time to hunker down in preparation for the winter and be a bit of a hermit - my true nature. I'm so glad to be back in Canberra for it this year where you really do feel like you get a proper autumn, unlike Sydney where you have a year-long summer with a brief interjection of biting Harbour winds sometime around August.

And very soon it will be Samhain (for the uninitiated that's Halloween, celebrated on May 1 in the Southern Hemisphere) - my favourite celebration. In preparation I have gone out and bought the following goodies:

A flash new rolling pin, a scary cat biscuit-cutter to make scary gingerbread cats, and some black food dye to help ice them with.

As I write, the wind whips the house and whistles through the eaves - I can't wait for the crackling frost of winter!

Bounty

Today, after hiding in the air-con all day to escape the heatwave we're having here, I ventured out to discover that the lime tree and rosemary bush in the back yard are loving the heat:

And I am remembering why my mother always collected garden produce wearing a dress or apron - so handy!

Back indoors now - storm coming...

In with the new

H and I had a nice old time today, driving around Canberra and getting completely lost, but then finding ourselves again. We stopped in at the Mugga Lane tip where they have a place called Aussie Junk (it used to be called Revolve which I think is a much better name but never mind) where they sell things that have been dumped off to go in the tip but have been deemed worthy of rebirth. H got a stack of seedling pots for free when we were going to pay for them at the shops. And I bought this cute ceramic lamp base which I'm guessing is from about the 70s, maybe 60s. The wiring's been redone so it's hard to tell. I was thinking I would try making a shade for it myself out of some Amy Butler fabric I've been coveting.

We put the seedling pots to use by planting carrots and radishes. I'll keep you posted on how they're doing. Here they are on Day One:

I put some carrots in the ground the other day but wasn't sure if they'd make it in this dry climate and harsh sun, but it seems a few are toughing it out and poking their little heads up. There are some things doing very well though. I noticed a tiny withering pumpkin plant when we arrived and started watering it about a week and a half ago. In that time it has from barely noticeable to megalomaniac triffid, with the ability to walk:

And yeah, it really does walk. It used its creepers to move itself about two feet to the right yesterday evening - clearly it had some place to be. I like a plant that displays strategic thinking. And it's growing about half a foot longer each day. There's about another month and a half I think before we can give up on it producing pumpkins this year, but given that it's now started making the very start of flowers I think we could be in for a small, late harvest.

It seems the flowers are doing nicely on very little rainfall too. Here are a few pics to leave you with.

Blood Moon

That was the view we had last night of the lunar eclipse. One of Hubby's friends took this photo. We saw the eclipse from a big flat rock cliff about an hour's walk into the centre of Garigal National Park in Sydney. We'd brought champagne and nibblies for dinner and had a great party howling under the crazy red moon.

A shrubbery or two

You might have thought I would stop blogging about Tassie eventually.
You'd be wrong...

Pack your bags...

Needless to say the past couple of weeks camping in Tasmania have been unreal. I'm still not sure why we came back - I guess there's money to be earnt and "real life" to face, whatever that is. In my opinion life never feels more real than when you are touring the countryside and sleeping under the stars. As we drove up to the ferry to go back to the mainland it was so tempting just to chuck a U-turn and head back to the mountains. There is so much to see in Tassie and we took so many photos that I couldn't possibly inflict them all on you at once. So instead I will drag the torture out, submitting you to a handful of photos each day. So what better time to start a photo-tour of Tassie than right now. By the way, I would give these to you in chronological order, but of course, that's just more organisation skills than I am willing to use while I'm still on holiday. Also, I can't remember where all these shots were taken as some were hurried snaps from the side of the road. Just flow with it - this is a holiday after all.

Hope you are enjoying your holiday so far. Put up the tent and get a good night's sleep because tomorrow we're heading up Cradle Mountain.

Nature - up close and personal

Hubby and I did a bit of bushwalking on the weekend and discovered the native spring flowers out in force. Anyone who thinks the Aussie bush is drab and frazzled should think again:

And the wildlife was out and about too, hiding amongst the rocks in the creek. We came across an eel:

And a pretty big yabbie:

Unfortunately I came home with a piece of wildlife of my very own - a tick. Hubby got it off by drowning it in Jack Daniels first. Pretty funny - it actually looked drunk, flaying its legs around until Hubs plucked it off with a tweezer.