We've had a big warm easterly wind.
It's very hard to take a photo of wind.
Trees swaying and bending.
Leaves skittering and dancing westwards down the street
and gathering in an eddy at my garage door.


A photo is too still.
Wind is not a good subject for a still portrait. 

I can see over the road in the Daycare Centre,
the creative teachers have been hanging billowing streamers
on the branches of the playground trees.
The children are loud and screechy in the wind,
running and flapping about like small wild ponies.

It was too rainy and wild for a walk around the lake early this morning.
Instead I stayed in bed and read.
This afternoon late
I took my walk.
The warm easterly wind blew in my face
and whipped my hair in all directions
and the cicadas were so loud.
My instinct was to run and screech into the wind
for sheer joy, like the children,
but others walking by rather inhibited me!
  

Instead I gathered an autumn tussie-mussie

and brought home these beautiful leaves. 

The evenings are drawing in.
There is a new feeling of darkness.
At night I'm woken by acorns falling on the Daycare roof
and find myself creeping about checking out strange bumps and thumps.
There is a feeling in my soul
of a mellowness.
I find myself counting on my fingers and working out when our Halloween
would be.
Yes .. this is
Autumn.
But Easter is coming.

I fetch Juliet's books,
"Dancing With The seasons"
and "Celebrating the Southern Seasons"
(By Juliet Batten.)
I will read them again and settle myself into the season of Autumn.

All my life I have participated in the church year.
The Catholic liturgy is rich in ritual and festival.
The festivals are rooted in ancient seasonal celebrations.
They are however, from the northern hemisphere
and more and more I long for our southern seasons to be celebrated,
rooted in the earth, the universe.

I am so grateful to Juliet for her wonderful scholarship and wisdom.
Long ago she began to explore our seasons and ways to celebrate them.
It was my most happy day when I discovered her books.
Later I had great pleasure meeting this lovely and special woman,
and of course following her wonderful blog,
which you will find here...


seasonalinspiration.blogspot.co.nz