The seasons move on

This post has been catalysed by visiting my friend Rob's house for a run today and noticing his tree dahlia had blooms on it.  Because I forgot to do it, he took some photographs.

These are not the regular 1m high dahlias, but ones which are at least 3m high when they flower.   As as a result of needing to take in a whole lot of energy to create such a large plant they tend to start flowering round about this time of year.  Often this is just in time for the first severe frost to kill the plant.  So that led me to think a bit about the weather.

We passed on Summer this year: no days over 35C and very few over 30C.  In view of the number of flowering plants reported in my last post I was beginning to wonder if we had decided to skip Winter as well, and go straight back to Spring!  However there are some chilly nights in the current weather forecast.

Rain has followed the same pattern as last year with a lot - and do I mean a lot - over Summer and then much drier weather starting in mid March.

The drier weather has meant that autumn foliage has coloured up nicely as shown by Rob's maple.

The sky is very clear in the morning leading to nice vapour trails (in this case a Virgin Blue flight, I suspect from Adelaide (or Perth) to Sydney)

 while optimistic clouds gather each evening.