Autumn Red

The weather has just recently turned a touch autumnal. Where summer is bright blue sky and yellow daisies, and winter is a sea of black coats walking headlong  into a southerly, autumn is the red of a ripe chilli pepper and a turning leaf. I'm noticing lots of red at the moment, especially in the tomato patch. Seems everyone's tomatoes are ripening slowly.  The cherry tomatoes have been ripening steadily for a few weeks now, but the last remaining grosse lisse tomato plant has just the one ripe tomato shining up like a beacon from the green of the plant. It is the first time in three years of gardening that I've had a large size tomato ripen, which is, in this climate, and with everything I've had to go through to keep these babies alive, a bit of a miracle.

Autumn makes me think of Tokoroa, and the start of hockey season. Hockey practice after school would end about 5pm, and I would walk home afterwards with it getting steadily darker, the sky big and wide and still. I was a dreamy teenager, kind of lost in some other place. I loved walking home and seeing the lights on in people's houses, seeing them going about their evening rituals. I wrote poems in my head as I walked. It was lovely to get home and find the fire on, I can hear the sound of my mother pulling the drapes closed across the patio door. The drapes were red. My cheeks, chilled by the crisp air, were red.