Autumn is coming to an end here in Tasmania. It has been a very pleasant one with lots of dry, sunny days. I seem to have spent a lot of it riding the bus to Hobart and back and the beautiful colours have really cheered me up a lot. As much as I love spring I think autumn may be my favourite season. Spring comes and goes so quickly and is often wet and windy. Autumn has lingered this year as if it didn’t want to go.

I’ve seen the cycle of the apple trees as they ripened and were harvested. Now the trees have turned yellow and the leaves have fallen as if they are exhausted from the effort of producing their crop. The cherries are long finished and so are the grapes. The poplars have turned from green to gold and now some of them are bare.

I would have loved to have been able to jump off the bus some days and photograph the things I’ve seen; driveways lined with ornamental trees that have turned red, Japanese Maples in gardens, roadside foliage. If I did jump off the bus though I’d have to wait hours for another so I store these scenes in my memory instead.

I have been to a few places where I could take pictures though. The Botanical Gardens are lovely in autumn and so is New Norfolk where we went the other week.

Recently my sister and I, after fighting the crowds at Salamanca Market on a Saturday morning, escaped to sit in nearby St David’s Park and we talked about why we like autumn so much. We are from England so our childhood memories are of the type of autumn we have here in Tasmania. We agreed that it is the variety of shapes and colours that we like. It’s nice to have the evergreens, the pines and eucalypts but we love the oaks, elms and other deciduous trees. As children we liked to collect acorns from a big old oak tree in our street. Acorns are beautiful and I appreciate them just as much now as I did when I was six or seven.

The days are getting shorter now and the piles of leaves are bigger. Children and some adults play with them in the parks but in the street they are starting to look a little sad and unwanted. The mornings are cold and sometimes foggy. I don’t mind too much. I like winter here too. It’s not too harsh. We get just enough snow to get excited about seeing it but not so much that it makes our lives difficult. I always hope to see a good snowfall at least once every winter but haven’t managed to photograph any for a few years.  Maybe this year I will and later I’ll write a post about how much I like winter.