It's 7am, driving to the Market. I know it is still September, but I also know it is autumn.
Last night a huge and bright, full harvest moon floated in the clear night sky.
This morning skeins of geese honk as they streak across a milky pink sky. Mist lies two foot deep over river-edged fields, horns of Highland cattle just peeping through the top.
Seasons used to drift gently, one in to the other but this year has been decisive, positive, dramatic.
Snow, cold, cold snow in April, smothering the brave spring flowers, as incongruous as snow on orange trees in Cordoba.
Then a hot, dry summer, the kind we all think we remember from our school days. When plants that didn't wilt rushed to flower, set fruit and then die back.
There is a second, super-abundant fruiting on fig trees; bean pods hanging from wisteria; holly hedges splattered liberally with blood-red berries.
There were Ink cap fungi pushing through the grass at Whitbarrow at the beginning of the month. Now windfall apples, crab apples and quince cover the ground.
Not quite October yet the newly swept and lined chimney is warming with a log fire.
Is it time to change the quilt? Draw the curtains in the evening? Hunt out the winter woolies?
Discard the salads and brew up some tasty stews and soups?
It is now lunchtime and I am glad I chose a shirt, not a jumper. The previously frost-rimed roses are now glowing in the sun, with a hint of fragrance in the air.
The jumpers can stay a little longer in the cupboard.
