With this latest cold snap, one thing is certain–autumn is here. Apart from the cold and the sun setting earlier, there are a few tell-tale signs in nature that autumn has arrived.
The Leaves
This one is a bit obvious, right? Yeah, yeah, the leaves fall in autumn... good observation, I hear you sarcastically mutter. But you can't really have a post about this season without talking about the changing trees because, oh my, is it gorgeous. Now's the time to get out to a lake or to the forest and really soak up the changing colours.
The Fruit
In this day and age it's sometimes hard to distinguish fruit seasons when you can find them in the supermarket all year round. When I lived in New Zealand I had a small fruit orchard in the garden and you really started to understand the changing of the seasons through fruit. For me, the sudden abundance of figs in the supermarket signals the end of summer, then come blackberries, mandarins, plums and pomegranates. Apples and pears? Yep, they're autumnal fruits too.
Conkers!
If you're not from Britain then the likelihood of you knowing what conkers is, is pretty slim. So let me explain. This time of year is also signalled by things dropping off trees and narrowly avoiding your head–I'm talking of course, about acorns and chestnuts and all the other weird and wonderful seeds that Berlin trees drop. In Britain, we used to gather up the horse chestnuts, drill a hole through one of them and pull a string through the hole so that you're chestnut was dangling on the string. Then it was conkers time! This entailed trying to hit the other player's dangling conker with yours. You take it in turns until one breaks off it's string... and that's it.
So wrap up warm and get out into the nature, enjoy the changing colours and the final days of sun because as everyone says, Winter is Coming.
If you're still learning the basics then you'll know that it's hard to get poetic about your surroundings when you don't have many adjectives to put to good use yet. Well, I'm here to help you.