Saturday, April 28, 2012

New Season's Apples

Tonight, miles away, I can hear the start of every speedway race, a revving pitch of juiced up V8s across the flatlands of the old swamp country. An imminent thunderstorm is trying hard to make contact. We are all waiting for it. In between races, the storm lets out a low rumble. New westerlies work on changing the big trees' minds. The frogs are in romance mode - I think I ran over one who launched bravely onto the tarmac after his mate. Sand Patch swells in the coasthills. The toilet flushes next door.
People are burning off because the authorities have just started giving out permits after a scary, tinderbox summer. Cycling through the night's quiet, dark roads, I can smell the different kinds of wood smoke (swamp, mallee, eucalypt, balga, taylorina). I can smell the drains filled with last night's downpour, new flowers, turned earth, damp peppermint leaves, steaming afternoon sun-warmed bitumen.
Along the highway into town, the casuarinas are flowering. It's a drive-by flash of brown and green according to their sex. Sheoake. Heoke. Sheoake. Heoake ... A local supermarket boasts new season apples. Smoke lays across the glass-off.
It's been warm and grey and nobody knows what to wear. We sweat in a filtered sun and freeze in the shade. We put on our sunglasses and then take them off again. Beanies are still bothersome. The quickening of the sun over the horizon at the end of the day has taken us by surprise. All of a sudden I have to turn my car's headlights on before the close of business.

8 comments:

  1. You are beginning your winter and we are trying hard to begin summer, but still freezing and wet... Nice imagery.

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  2. Tom, I have no idea of what the change of seasons is like in Bath, but I love the change here. It's so sudden. After the relentless, dried out easterlies of summer, there is a 'stilling' that is quite breath taking! It may account for all the head colds in the last week ...

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  3. This captures it EXACTLY. That in-between-ness. Sleep is strange - starting out with an extra blanket to wake too hot.....twilight sleep too, kind of half in and half out.

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  4. Around September, look out for the glut of posts beginning, "Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness" emanating from here, and you will begin to get a rough idea about our Autumns.

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  5. I think I was wrong about that storm.

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  6. I commented yesterday but something went wrong......great post. Captured the season perfectly.

    We got some rain but yes, the storm was a fizzog. I was wrong too. The surf was gorgeous anyway.

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  7. Likewise commented yesterday then
    deleted in error. Grrr...

    Bloody cold here Sarah..

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  8. There you go MF, you were in the spam folder. You must have looked suspicious! x

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