Woke ridiculously early this morning, a cat induced awakening, Badger needed to go out.
I couldn't settle back to sleep and lay there listening to old cat, Phoebe, take what seemed like three hours to wash herself, she had been sleeping on the myrtle trunk under the window,on Stephen's black jumper.
Lucky she is a black cat.
To save myself from this torture I slipped out of bed, and took myself and Phoebe to the back door.
It was around 4.30am and so dark, now it's nearly 6am and it's still dark, such a change from only a few weeks ago when bright sunshine would greet me .
Thursday morning when I walked down the hill to get some milk and a house cake for Louis' morning tea I imagined I could smell the first hint of autumn.
Love autumn, love the thought of a warm fire again but already missing the thought of these warm mornings when slippers to cosy my feet are cast aside and carefree bare feet are confident that they will only meet friendly warm floor boards.
Life really is so much easier in so many ways in the summertime.
The washing dries the same day ( or hour) it is hung on the line, no saggy soggy washing hanging out there waiting days for enough winter sunshine and wind.
Days get stretched, meals are movable, eaten outside, scraps tossed to the chooks and cats like at an ancient banquet. well maybe the ancients had animals more menacing than fluffy hens and cats but the sentiment is there.
Fizzy cold drinks, ginger beer, and this seasons find, plain soda water, taste the way they should and do the job they should - quench a summer thirst, simple.
No thought of hiding under the covers to gather the courage to get myself up and get the fire blazing, summer makes it so easy to sidle slowly out of bed, go through the kitchen and open the door to the day, open the windows too and the front door, let the day in and the night, the short night out.
The sun goes to bed so late and wakes so early that summer night is just for sleeping or for restless tossing and turning if the weather has been too warm.
Outside and inside begin to merge and whether you are at the beach or in the suburbs a certain amount of outside comes inside on all those bare feet, summer holidays, summer feet, summer dirt and it doesn't seem so bad unless there is summer rain and the fine sandy dirt starts to turn to mud - on the kitchen floor- and you realise you forgot to sweep this morning because you took your breakfast things and ate outside before it got too hot to enjoy the garden and then others joined you and when you took your dishes inside you were half blind from the sunlight and the day was getting away from you and you had things to do so you or someone quickly did the dishes and moved on to the next thing.
The winter comfort of closing the curtains at the end of the day to keep warm , to keep cosy is replaced by curtains that are never closed, the trees in the front garden with their full summer leaves giving privacy to evenings spent with windows thrown open until the mozzies make too much of meal of us.
So we wake to bare windows and full light and the days seem even longer.
So the summer goes, it has been hot and it has been dry, not much rain but it has often been sweat drenchingly humid and it's not over yet.
We have really experienced the weather of our summer so that as autumn begins to creep in we will feel a change, smell the change, love the change of seasons, love that we can have favourite parts to each season and that they all roll around each year, a bit the same, a bit different, loved at different ages for different reasons.
Free to enjoy, despise, wish away, luxuriate in every year over and over.
What a gift.
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