AUTUMN

Another Autumn has come. It is my favorite season, holding all that I love, I never want it to end. It's Harvest time, the girls are camping at the farm, picking the fruit, hunting for eggs, celebrating a birthday,  sunny and crisp in the morning as I carry my coffee to the porch ( only to be driven back inside by the stench of rotting rabbits under the house), wood piles up by the back door ready for the first real need for warmth, the sound of the footy in the background.

I really love those things about Autumn I know I can rely on each year. The leaves will fall, the walnuts will go to market, another birthday for my girls, the sound of laughter from the trampoline, cleaning the dust from every surface after the harvest has finished, the endless cups of tea and cake, concerts in the shearing shed at the end of the day. But I also know that things will change. As I watched the kids frantically search for eggs in the grass, I wondered if next year might just be a little bit different. I remember so vividly one of Phemie's first easter egg hunts. It was in our backyard in Kensington. She was two. Ailee and Lucinda was still in special care, at the Women's Hospital,  it would be the last time that our eyes and time was just for her.

I hope the farm is somewhere she will always feel like she can be that child. Open skies, her family around, no pressures, just her, in her PJ's collecting Easter eggs.