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Trespassıng deer!! Two!
Photos taken from around the estate 1st November 2005
Godalming, Surrey, England.
Growing up in Queensland left me with an ignorance of the beauty of climatic seasonal changes, for in Cairns all that you have is the Wet and the Dry seasons. Which means that for most of the year, it's varying degrees of hot and there's very little rain to be had; perfect beach weather. Then for about two or three months after March, the Wet Season kicks in, heralding almost non-stop rain, the occasional cyclone, a constant humidity which is thick enough to choke upon, and usually a fortnight of what we innocents bemoan as being 'cold'.
But our trees are forever green and unchanging. They may go through their own brief little phases that seem unconnected with the weather, dropping their leaves about as quickly as they grow new ones, but never bare, never autumnal. The flowers, too, come in and out of season in a cycle that was set a millenia before and who's reason is as unfathomable and as unconnected to the skies as the changing foliage. We cannot lay claim to a true Spring, though there are months in which suddenly there are flowers and new growth enough
Beautiful autumn colours
This one is from a wall in Guildford, not the estate to justify it, for there was no true Winter to precede it, nor an Autumn. We are a people who live in an eternal Summer. We are the children of the Wet Tropics, for whom true Winter, Spring and Autumn are something that you learn about in school and seem very distant and other-wordly. Some might refer to the Wet Season as winter, but should a day ever occur that witness the arrival of snow falling from a Cairns sky, mass hysteria would no doubt follow.
And so it was that in England I first discovered the unimaginable beauty of Autumn, something which had always sounded rather dreary and brown and dead. But it's not, it's the most astonishingly vibrant season of all. It's a sudden flaring burst of colour as the plant kingdom senses the coming early-morning frosts of a still-distant winter and reacts with a rebellious flourish of its most dramatic finery. Yes, some trees allow their leaves to fade straight into brown before dropping them to the forest floor, but even they are beautiful, a rainbow of different tans, beiges, coffees, chestnuts, cinnamons, hazels, and rusts. What's more, the serene background of varying browns serve as
Me being a drongo
Photos taken from around the estate an emphasis to the brilliance of the crimson-reds and the glaring fuschias and the neon-yellows of other plants.
It is a time of the most incredible displays of every colour imaginable, of hues that should never be possible in nature, of titian and ochre intermingling with pure living flame that should burn your fingers when you tug it from the branch. It is an earthy, half-shadowed time when every footstep is heralded with a soft crunching of the fallen twigs and leaves and foliage beneath you, which in the crushing of yields the sweet incense of bark and pine and composting vegetation. It is a time of contrasts, of naked limbs from the trees who have shed too eagerly and of branches bowing heavily with the weight of multi-coloured pennants unwilling to surrender.
I love everything about autumn in England. I enjoy the crispness of the air, especially in the mornings when the frost is coating every horizontal surface like a promise of the snow to come. I relish the sound of frost beneath my shoes almost more than the crunching leaves, for it is sharper, like crystals or ground glass in newspaper. I delight in wrapping up
Neon yellow leaves
Photos taken from around the estate in colourful scarves for the afternoon walks around the estate, even on days when they're not vaguely necessary. I adore the colours of autumn, which have to be seen to be believed, and which my camera could rarely even begin to capture. I glorify in the occassional flurry of leaves falling upon you like a petulant autumn snowstorm as you're driving down a tree-canopied country lane. I love the sudden scampering of the squirrells as they dart about in search of last-minute winter provisions and the flocks of birds pausing each day on their way south.
One morning during breakfast we spied two young deer grazing alongside the driveway and I rushed upstairs to snatch up my camera and shuck my shoes, knowing that the crunch of them against the morning frost would betray me. I snuck out the servant's door and crept up on the animals, feet protesting against the frozen sharpness of the gravel through thin summer socks. It wasn't until after several photos and a lot of sneaking that they noticed me and bounded off, but only for about twenty metres before warily stopping to graze again. And so I followed, and the pattern continued, with
my feet rapidly becoming solid chunks of needle-pricked ice, until I lost sight of the animals near the top of the property. I don't think my feet have ever hurt that badly before....but it was worth it. Oh, how I adore this season.
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Ode To Autumn by John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost Leaves Covering the Floor
Photos taken from around the estate keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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