Autumn is the Jura exploding in streaks and firework of colour, as if some overenthusiastic child with a palette of oranges, yellows, browns and reds had slashed random horizontal brush strokes across its face. Irrational and disorganised, temperature changing with altitude and wind paths, species following soil, or merely where the seeds landed.
But that is the Bernese Jura; , and I've no reason to visit Dave and Ruth; here it's boring conifers that don't even know winter has arrived until they're covered in snow.
Autumn is tits gathered on the seedheads of the sunflowers, colourful as any flower; who grew sunflowers this year?
Autumn is five million ducks and other waterfowl escaping the winter in Scandinavia or Siberia. Watched by the supercilious, power-line perched swallows preparingfor their own tropical holiday they carpet the lake in a patchwork quilt of eiderdown, scarcely deigning to move aside to let the little passenger ferries pass.
But they haven't arrived yet, and who can tell if they will manage before the end of October?
Autumn is raking up and bagging barrowloads of leaves and discovering the thousands of species of fungi concealed beneath. Now, there's something guaranteed.
But the raking leaves them broken and distorted, and there is no time to disengage them gently; those leaves have to go.
What else is autumn? The walnuts stuffed into the most improbable crannies by famine-fearing squirrels. Too late for the vendanges, the harvest of the vines; half the stalks are by now pruned back to the tiny nub that will give next year's growth, the year after's wine. The valiant flowers give one last blast of colour, hoping to set seed before the bees close down their storm shutters, the nights fall ever earlier, in reflection of my own declining lifeline.
But who can photograph mortality? You get no seasons in a city.
