Goodbye, Summer.

I only just realised tonight that today's Leap Day signals the end of Summer. That really snuck up on me! The very words 'end of Summer' bring up hazy memories of being a kid and having to wave goodbye to long, long days, to running around outside playing French cricket past bedtime, dying from the overwhelming heat but partly revelling in it, too.

Summers as a grown-up aren't so dreamy. I mean, it's hot and sometimes it's smelly, and it's hard to get the washing dry in all this humidity. Nevertheless, this Summer has felt like the first one in Queensland that I haven't wanted to kick and scream the whole way. I'm a winter baby. I was born in August, and I don't know if that has anything to do with anything, but humidity and hotness are so far from my thing that when it gets crazy-sticky, I start thinking thoughts that centre around marrying a polar bear and moving to the Arctic.

The pragmatic and unromantic part of me wonders if the reason I've survived this Summer in Queensland is because, for the first time, I'm in a place with air conditioning. The glass-half-full part, however, thinks that just maybe I've started to acclimatise to this place. I hope so.

Having said all that, though, I'm not sad to say goodbye to Summer. For starters, it's going to be a slow evolution into the new season. Experience has taught me that March can be almost as hot as February. But at the end of it, there's Autumn. Autumn. My favourite season. The nights get cool, the wind gets blustery, and chamomile tea feels less like medicine and more like a treat.

I'll be sad to say goodbye to Summer leaves and Summer colour (hence the photo explosion of Summery bits from the last week or so). But everything else, I can totally part with. Autumn wins anytime.