What’s your favorite season, and what are some of the special things that you love about it?
As March is here, and bringing with it the first change in season of the year, the Wenches decided to use this month’s Ask-A-Wench feature to wax poetic on the above question:
Anne: In the Southern Hemisphere, specifically in Melbourne, the worst heat of summer is, I hope, behind us and we're gradually slipping into autumn, which is my favorite season. The days are sunny and bright and nicely warm, but not roasting, and the nights are blissfully cool, sometimes with a refreshing nip in the air. Already I have bulbs nosing their little green shoots out of the earth, while the summer flowering plants keep producing. It's a fruitful time of year and as well as eating lots of lovely fruit, I've made jam from the produce of friends' fruit trees and berry bushes.
March is also the time of year I head a thousand miles north to Queensland, to attend my annual writers retreat. It's not a big event, nothing like a conference, just eight or nine writers meeting for a week, to reflect on our year, to plan our writing, to brainstorm, talk writing and publishing and, of course, to write. We've been doing it now since 2007 -- that's the year I first met Mary Jo, Pat and Jo Beverley, well before I became a wench.
Our annual retreat is something we all look forward to. We live pretty far from each other -- while I'm flying a thousand miles north, Barbara Hannay is flying a thousand miles south, and Rosie is flying over from France, via NZ. More, it's a time to take stock, reflect and plan. Plus we're all good friends, so it's fun as well. And it's a beautiful location. It'll be much warmer in Queensland, but when I come home I'll find that while I was away, my fence will be covered in scarlet leaves and Melbourne will have slipped into autumn.
Pat: I’m in Southern California, an area people claim has no seasons. Looking out at the pouring rain, I beg to differ. We have rainy season, foggy season, hot season, and cool. As someone who is always cold, hot season is my favorite. By July, the morning fogs have finally burned off. The sky is a gorgeous blue, and I can sit outside and work all day, if so inclined. My roses look like giant bouquets, the days are long and filled with the sunshine that feeds my energy. We walk the beach year round, but temperatures in the 70s and 80s encourage us to test the waters and linger to watch the birds. The whales are gone by then, but we can sometimes watch the dolphins frolicking in the waves. So if I must choose a season, I choose the lazy days of summer.
Nicola: I love all the seasons and feel very glad that I live in a country where they are so distinct from one another. I particularly enjoy watching the gradual change in season and the tiny things that indicate that spring is coming or that summer is slipping away. At this time of the year I love the green haze of new leaves opening on the trees and the way that the early mornings are lighter and the birds are so wide awake. Summer is fabulous for many things including the smell of mown grass and the scent of roses, and winter is great as long as it has a crisp sort of cold that brings frosts and preferably a little bit of powdery snow. My favourite time of year, though, is autumn. I absolutely love that moment when summer starts to turn. At first you don’t really notice it ; the days may still be hot but suddenly the evenings have a tiny chill in the air. There’s a dew on the grass in the mornings and the air smells of bonfires and wood smoke.
Up on the hills above the village where I live you can trace the progress of the seasons through the landscape. In summer the river often runs dry because it’s fed by springs deep in the rocks. The water takes months to filter through the chalk and then as autumn and winter come, it starts to bubble up again and the river and pools come alive. The autumn is also my favourite time to go walking at Ashdown House. It’s the time of the deer rut and the air is full of the sound of the stags bellowing in the woods!
Susan: Every season has plenty to recommend it, and has its downside too, and a favorite season is a highly individual and personal thing. I have this theory that the season people tend to love most is their birthday season (at least I've noticed that among my family and friends). As an October baby, that puts me squarely in the autumn fanbase. And I do truly love autumn, its cool, crisp air and snapping breezes, its warm golden hues against brilliant blue skies, not to mention the passing of summer at last (not a fan of the hot, humid summers where I live)--and I love the promise of winter in the air.
Of all the seasons, I love winter best, though I may be in the minority there. There's a peacefulness about winter that the other seasons don't offer--the quieting of the rush-rush of life as we stay home more often, rest and nest snug out of the cold, wake to soft blankets of white and silent drifts of lace spiraling down from the sky. Winter is contemplative and relaxing, and for me, there's something restorative in it, especially for this introvert. I'd far rather be cold than hot; cold you can do something about, hot you sometimes just have to endure, especially if you're a wilter in the heat, like me.
And sweaters--I love cozy, soft sweaters, and have stacks of them in my closet. As a kid growing up in way Upstate New York (wherein lies the real reason for my love of fall and winter both--those seasons are spectacularly beautiful in the Adirondacks), we went sledding, skating, skiing, built snowpeople and snow forts, had snowball fights, shoveled, and had plenty of snow days off school (I admit that my happy winter memories are pre-driving, so I didn't have to deal with cars and slick roads).
Today I'm still a fan of snow days, and though shoveling is a definite downside, we have a snowblower now, and I'm often the first one out there, firing it up. While I do not like driving around in it, and avoid that whenever I can, I enjoy stomping around in boots, coat, hat, scarf, gloves--and finally going back inside, having earned some hot cocoa, or at least a steaming cup of strong tea. Winter's for me, and autumn next. Oh, if I could move north again, I would. I've worked more than one snow-stranded couple into my books--I love writing about winter, too.
Mary Jo: I hate playing favorites. I don’t believe in a BFF--Best Friend Forever--because each friend is special and the relationships is unique to the two of us in it. How can one choose a favorite when all are wonderful in different ways?
So I can't choose a favorite season. Like Susan, I'm a native of Upstate New York where one must take winter seriously! Shoveling and icy roads get old fast, but there is such beauty is a sparkling white world below a deep blue sky! And there is nothing like the soft peace and silence walking on a snowy night! And it's quite fun getting snowed in with favorite people. <G>
Spring is an easy choice: where I live in Maryland, the lush beauty of the flowers is stunning as it changes day by day. From daffodils to azaleas, the blossoms are spectacular and the brilliant bright green of the leaves radiates fresh new life.
Summertime and the living is easy! I don't like too much heat and humidity, but sitting on the cool screened porch with cats and breezes and a good book is hard to beat.
What about autumn? The changing colors and the snap in the air bring one alive--and the beauty is haunting because it is short lived. One strong rainstorm can turn the world from brilliance to ghostly bare trees overnight. And soon it will be the stark, subtle beauty of winter.
I think what this boils down to is that I really like living in a place that has four distinct seasons!
Joanna: I admit to being fond of the Fall -- or as my British characters would call it -- Autumn. It's the yellow fruitfulness I go for. Food, y'know. Here in the Virginia hills we grow apples. It is not impossible you have noshed on one of our locals at some time. Having grown the apples and engaged in all the usual apple pursuits -- like pies -- we then press them for juice and make cider.
Sweet apple cider is generally pasteurized because that's how the Health Department rolls, but there's a store down the road where you can buy unpasteurized cider. It is crushed by the Amish. I am not entirely sure this isn't slightly illegal. I do feel an illicit thrill, buying it. We also make several national brands of hard cider. Bold Rock may be the biggest. They have a local cidery with a tasting tour. It is sorta the microbrew rif of apples.
I see I have wandered a bit from aesthetic appreciation of the season. Let me finish with my heartfelt appreciation of the color of Fall leaves. In the lucky years when temperature and rainfall happen just right, the hills are spectacular. They run buses of tourists down the windy roads and heaven help you if you get stuck behind one of those behemoths. The whole business of innocent green leaves suddenly turning red and purple and all different shades is so odd and unlikely that no Fantasy writer would dare to use it for worldbuilding in a story. So. that's my vote for Fall.
Susanna: Autumn is my favourite time of year, and always has been. There’s a softness to the season, and a…dare I say, a certain kind of idleness that other seasons lack? Spring is a busy time, for nature and for people, and the summer has a briefness that demands you make full use of it, and winter is a test of one’s endurance—but the autumn lets me wander in the misting rain (my favourite kind of rain), and brings cool nights and foggy mornings and the golden harvest moon, and here in Canada at least it paints the landscape with a wondrous brush of colours. And the world slows down.
So yes, I love the autumn best.
But this year, more than any other I can yet remember, I’ve been happy, too, to see the birds returning, and to hear them singing in the morning where, for so long, there’s been only silence. And to know it’s nearly spring.
Andrea: I live in New England and love having four seasons. There’s a magic to each of them—the soft silence of walking through snowfall at night, the ground aglow with an ethereal light; the first tiny bursts of spring color as a crocus or daffodil pokes up from the taupes and ochers of the still-barren ground; the glorious pink and golds of a summer sunset as the colors deepen into evening twilight . . .
But I have to say, I love autumn best. There is a uniquely memorable clarity to the season in New England. The sunlight has just lost the languid softness of summer, its pale, heat-kissed hues sharpening to a deeper honey gold that drizzles and dances over the red and yellow rufflings of the changing leaves. The air turns cooler, crisper, and redolent with the scent of fresh-chopped wood and ripening apples. The bright blaze of glory—a celebration of the moment that one knows will soon fade to brittle browns—seems all the more beautiful for its fleeting splendor.
So, now that we've sung our praises to the Four Seasons, it's your turn. What's your favorite season, and what do you love about it? Please share!