Vena McGrath, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Vena McGrath
Saturday 26 May 2007 = 8.16 pm EST 5/26/2007 2:59:33 AM
Winter is almost here :) The long awaited coolness of late Autumn and Winter is here, with Autumn almost gone and winter beginning next week. Autumn proved to be quite balmy and fortunately brought rain to many parts of Australia that badly needed some of the wet stuff. Here in Sydney we enjoyed some wet days and nights and the fact that it often rained on Wednesdays saved people using water on that day to water their gardens.
I personally love Winter. The fire burning away, the fact that you can make your rear warm by standing in front of the fire and then racing to plonk back on your chair is kind of nice. Whereas in Summer everything inside the house is hot to touch, in winter it's the opposite. The door frames and window frames are icy, the cars get covered in ice overnight, and the grass outside is white with frost. During the last part of Autumn the dews have become heavier, some days none. Now, at the end of Autumn, the frosts have begun. That's very early for where I live.
The last really cold Winter I remember was in 2002. My car was due for it's 12 month service as I had bought it new the year before. I had to leave home early to go to Liverpool to the Hyundai dealers and leave the car for a few hours. It was very cold outside that morning, and as I drove up the road and onto the main drag through my suburb, I anxiously waited for the heater to heat up. However something else happened instead! The windscreen totally froze over and I couldn't see the road through the ice. I pulled over off the road and, stupidly, turned on the wipers and the windscreen washers. Oh oh, then I had an extra thick slab of ice on the windscreen.
After a bit of scraping and hacking I managed to get the ice off and continued on my way, slowly. The morning was heavy with fog as well as ice. I drove out onto the road I needed to travel on to Liverpool and was amazed at the sight. This road travels through about 15 klms of farmland and it looked that morning like something out of a frightnight movie. The trees were white with tentacles of ice from one to the other. The paddocks were ice. It looked like I imagined it would if it had snowed (I've never seen snow for real). The very fact that the frost was so heavy and it was so cold makes that Winter stick in my brain.
I remember many Winters like that when I was young and my children were born - between September 1966 and June 1969. Two of my children were born in June, a year apart, and I remember how cold it was. The hospital I went to had no heating and no carpet and we would wake early of a morning to look out the windows at a scene of frozen ice. Fortunately in those days you got to spend almost a week in bed in hospital so there wasn't a reason to get cold. Going home to a house with no heating was another thing - nappies to wash and try to get dry, getting out of bed in the middle of the night to feed a starving baby - all memories of harsh Winters.
Then, somewhere along the track of years, Winter warmed up. I could never quite figure out if it was because I moved from a fibro house to brick houses that winter no longer seemed as cold, or if it was because of the fact that the suburbs were filling with houses and the farmland was receding away in the distance. But I have lived where I do now for 17 years and it's quite open out back with farmland close by and yet, with the exception of that one particulary freezing year, most have not been memorable for being cold. Mind you I do have a slow combustion wood burner fire, I do have a heater in my car, and I do work in an air-conditioned office. So, if I think about it, I really am not exposed to the elements much at all.
Shaye likes to wee with company so I spend some time outside each night waiting on him to do the tour of the yard, sniff out all the spots until he decides where he will do the job. I'm finding it quite cold out there this year and as I said earlier, the door frames and window frames are freezing. The cars are icing up already, so early in the season. I will be curious to see if the cold intensifies or if this is just a cold snap coming up and down from areas that have had snow already, south and north of Sydney. Meanwhile I gaze fondly at my fire and think how lucky I am to have the comfort of its warmth and how fortunate I am not to have to sleep outside. I told Shaye he should be very grateful too as many dogs and cats don't get to sleep inside like he does. I would tell Jasmine (my cat) but that's a waste of time. She just wants what she wants and when she wants it :)
I put Jasmine outside of a morning usually before I go to work so she spends the day out in the air and the sun. One morning last week, after I put her out with her breakfast, she was soon back crying at the door to come back in. At that time I hadn't started to light the fire. She came inside, went and sat next to the firebox and started crying at me as if to say "come on now, where the heck is the fire?" Needless to say that night I lit the fire for the first time this season so she would be warm (well I wasn't thinking of myself now was i?)
Shaye had his hydro mobile bath today and as usual, he acted up when the guy had to blow dry his coat. So, he isn't quite dry when I go out front to bring him inside. Luckily the fire was on and the warmth of the house soon dried him off. He had the long hair cut from under his paws as well, so he no longer has snow boots on. He smells like he should be going out on the town, with his doggie perfume spray, and he looks just so sweet and fluffed up. We had a nanny nap together this afternoon - he loves my waterbed but he is a bed hog so I spend a bit of time trying to find room for my legs during the night. A 45 kilo dog is a bit of a weight to try and move on a waterbed, but if I can get him on a roll it's okay :)
My son has renamed Kyna to Lizzie ... she will always be Kyna to me though. She is growing like a weed and he is very happy with her progress. She will be out to visit next weekend as she has to have her 3rd vaccination, so I will be interested to see her.
Tomorrow I'm going to a old world fayre locally and I'm looking forward to seeing what they have there. It's supposed to consist of all kinds of interesting things and lots of stalls with wares of days gone by. Perhaps they will have fortune tellers there so I might even have my hand read or the tarot cards, just for interest sake. My daughter and grand daughter are going to go along too for the experience.
