The Summer of my Discontent

It's over, hooray! The mornings and evenings have a chill to them; the air is crisper and clearer somehow; the leaves are beginning to turn and there's a scent of autumn on the air. It even rained yesterday!

'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' (thanks, Mr Keats!), autumn is a sort of last-ditch burst of splendour before the deathly chill of winter sets in, (get your leccie blankie on the bed by Anzac Day, folks!) It always makes me feel somehow renewed, though. Optimistic. I'm not a fan of summer in Canberra, and the one that's just finished? Well, quite frankly it sucked.

Of course, it wasn't all bad. Sure, I fell off my bike and had to spend the last 8 weeks in sweat-soaked agonies of immobility and dependence. I got stuck in the bath and grew a chicken-leg. The garden I started working on in late October has spent the last 8 weeks becoming a dessicated wasteland, apart from the weeds, which are thriving, waving their green rude-fingers at me as they try to strangle all the good things I planted. The house has deteriorated from “disorganised” to “disaster-area”, and much of me has followed it downhill, piling on blubber and dimples where no dimples should ever be.

On the other hand, though, I learned how to bottle fruit at Casa del Humble.


A terrific little assembly line, we had – BT's happy fruit recruits, working to transform a wheelbarrow full of peaches to gleaming rows of preserved goodness. Around Australia Day we were rewarded with jars of the fruits of our labours and delicious fruit pie, artfully and patriotically decorated with a little pastry coat of arms, tee hee; a work of art that cracked us all up.


I also learned that it is almost possible to live without my daily motorcycle therapy. Mr & Mrs Humble saw to it that I was not totally deprived, though, and I got to haul my growing butt onto the back of BT's GPZ a couple of times. Being on a motorcycle, even on the back of one, is so beautiful! I couldn't wipe the grin off my face.

So. Summer has come to an end and I am almost walking again, albeit very gingerly. I have an x-ray scheduled for Tuesday, and hope to throw away the moonboot after that. I shall get stuck into some walking to build up my scrawny chicken-leg and get rid of the blubber that has oozed onto my frame everywhere else. Best of all, in a couple of weeks I hope to get back on the Bomber, who has missed me as much as I've missed him, and get out and about for a bit of road therapy.

I love autumn!