Right now we’re in the season of winter.

I love winter. It calms my energies. My mind turns slowly inward, allowing me to time to read more, write more. I savour warm winter casseroles, roast dinners, soup for lunch. I wrap myself in winter clothes, warm comfortable boots, scarf folded around cold face, hat, gloves and coat keeping bitter cold at bay.

I love waking to stark bare branches on our European trees –Autumn Blaze maples – so glorious in the autumn and harshly bare in winter, before tiny budding green shoots appear as spring approaches.

Winter is my time of contemplation, time to sort family photos, catch up on programs missed during the busier days of summer and autumn, ring old friends, visit art galleries, listen to music and enjoy a glass of red rather than white wine.

When spring arrives winter clothes suddenly seem too heavy, too dark. Off go those warm winter scarves and out come light flimsy silky scarves and long sleeved T-shirts instead. Winter woollies are washed and aired, coats dispatched to the dry cleaners, doona covers changed, sandals rediscovered in the wardrobe.

With spring comes more activity; planting the petunias in preparation for a wild profusion of colour and summer flowers. Roses wake and once awake they will be with us for months, delivering show after show of colour and perfume as months roll on.

The garden emerges from its winter slumbers. Bees return to visit roses and grevilleas. They bury themselves deeply into the sweet nectar. Wattle birds return to our bottlebrushes and become regular visitors to this small back garden, splashing and gossiping cheerfully in our birdbath. Bursts of colour appear everywhere.

Summer is my time of indolence. Perhaps it’s simply a throwback to family memories of summer holidays, reminders of years we shared camping holidays with our children and friends. I relish the stillness of early mornings, the long hours of daylight, the late evening strolls around the village. Half the population in the village strolls at night.

We stop to chat with this one, pat a dog with that one, praise a garden. We pause to watch families of ducks swimming furiously around the lake with babies in tow. I love wearing casual light clothes and easy jeans, sandals and sharing simple salads for dinner. ‘Summertime and the livin’ is easy’...so sang Ella Fitzgerald.

When autumn signals its arrival the light summer doona makes way for the autumn warmth of wool. This is Bendigo at its most beautiful. The days are warm, the nights mild. It’s still possible to live in T-shirts and light clothes for much of this gentle season. Leaves begin to turn a glorious russet red, and we know winter is coming.

My mood of quiet contemplation sets in, preparing for winter to come. Nights grow colder and summer salads are suddenly ‘non rigueur’.

Our beautiful autumn trees are a little more denuded of their leaves each day as we return to winter. They will soon return to starkly bare.

‘Too soon’ we cry, but here it comes. Friends pack their caravans and plan their exits to northern Australia. We stay, hunker down, and prepare for our winter slow down.

Once again we have enjoyed those ‘four seasons in the mind of man’. Thank you John Keats, you sum it up for us so beautifully.

ANNIE YOUNG