The weather this year has been odd, I think the most succinct description I’ve come across to describe it is; Summer during Spring, Autumn during Summer and Summer during Autumn. And while the calendar might say October, the thermometer has been in the 30’s.
I am loving the extra warmth this year but the lack of rain is more than worrying. Sometimes it’s the obvious things that remind you, the great cracks in the ground as in the pictures above and bellow or the depth to which the well has dropped, other times it’s the less obvious that suddenly hit you, in my case it’s the access to part of my septic tank. The lid used to be level with the ground, now it protrudes 5cm/2in due to the shrinkage of the soil around it – I suppose the good sign from this is that the tank isn’t leaking
Anyway, back to autumn, it’s migration time when I start scanning the skies for the cranes and storks migrating south for the winter. So far I’ve not spotted any but I have been lucky enough to see a large group of golden orioles flit through the trees in the garden last month and yesterday it was 6 red kites flying south and then circling on a thermal just to the south of me. They looked so majestic gliding effortlessly across a clear blue sky.
