You Are Fall! Thoughtful Expressive Creative Poetic Smart What Season Are You? Take This Quiz :-) Find the Love of Your Life (and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.

Yeah! All right, so I massaged the results to get the correct one to fit this post. I'll admit I was winter, if that makes anybody happier. I just wasn't ready to post that for a few months yet :)


It's only 3.7C outside. Brr… It's not exactly grey, but definitely not sunny. I think it’s time to break out the furry hat and gloves (if only I could remember where I put them).

There are some consolations to this crisp weather, though. The lovely ivy on the buildings and retaining walls are turning deep red, the maples are just starting to show off their orange, red and green hues and the birch are turning green and gold (just wannabe Aussies, those birch trees!).

Check out the colours of Sweden in autumn. My friend Carolyn took this wonderful picture just outside of her apartment. I love autumn leaves.




I really do enjoy autumn as a season. The colours are so vibrant and amazing that it still takes my breath away. We don’t have anything quite like this back in Australia, certainly not in the part where I come from. Deciduous trees are pretty thin on the ground there, unless you make a special trip to some place like the Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens for a visit. All of our street trees were natives (kurrajongs or jacaranda) which stay green all year, so this is all very exotic for me. As is the crispness of the cold, the faint smell of wood smoke. Perhaps this is not as exotic for those less fortunate people from the crappy parts of Australia, but to me it is quite new.

Even a simple walk in the ´hood is breathtaking.



I also love to watch those lively little birds stocking up for the winter. I have a real soft spot for the tiny sparrows who are so charming. I do feel sorry for them, though, when the crows come along. I saw some sparrows outside pecking at a piece of discarded bread crust the other day. It looked so cute (I couldn’t take a picture as the camera is still not back!) Anyway, they were making those sweet little peeping noises and busily hopping here and there nibbling at the crust.

Then “the big boys” arrived. A group of three thug crows descended and swaggered over like schoolyard bullies. You could almost here them say “Clear off!” to the little birds. Of course the sparrows scattered and the crows argued among themselves for the spoils. There really is something quite creepy about crows. Last year, I took a picture of a group of them in late autumn, sitting atop a tree in the park:



I’ve just looked up what a collective group of crows is called and that creeps me out even more. Would you believe that it’s a murder of crows? Very apt, I think. Combine that description with the picture and it makes me believe that perhaps Daphne Du Maurier was on to something. Maybe the birds are taking over! After the visitations we had over the summer, I think I need to check out the situation with Bruce and Sheila - who have already taken over our apartment!



You will notice that I have pictures in this post. Does that mean we have a digital camera again? Sure does!

So what was wrong with our dear Canon a40? Buggered if I know. It's been a couple of weeks since we put it in to see what is wrong, but no word so far. So how am I taking photos? Well... err... ummm... would you believe that we were suffering from withdrawal symptoms and bought another one.

It's not as reckless and frivolous as it sounds. Lars-Göran always wanted an Olympus mju400, attracted by the 4 megapixels and the weatherproof case (a bonus on a damp environment like a boat). However, it was well outside of our price range. But today, we were walking in centrum when I ran into my old Swedish teacher just outside of the tiny mall we have.

We stopped and chatted about what we did in summer and Lars-Göran, being slightly bored looked at the window display and gasped. There was the camera he wanted for a ridiculously low price at our local electronics shop. It seemes that Olympus have brought out a new model with a few cosmetic changes, so the "old" model was being sold off cheaply to make room.

We decided that it would be worth having at that price regardless of what Canon tell us about our camera. Maybe if they fix it we can sell it. Or keep it. Who knows. But we have a camera again. And that makes us really happy.

And so I can show you another picture of that terrible place I live:



I've really got to get out of here.

NOT!