This week our host is Dawn from The Day After and the theme she has chosen is SPRING TIME. I think I’ve already expressed that this isn’t a good one for me, well not good for anyone who lives in the Southern Hemisphere or the tropics. Spring time was a long time ago, or so it seems.
I have to say that I don’t know that we even had a spring last year, it seemed to get hot faster than usual. As it turned out 2024 was the hottest year on record, so I think we went straight from winter to summer. So far this year our March has been the hottest March on record and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see April be the hottest April on record as well. The long range forecast is saying a hotter than average winter and less than average rain. The overnight temperatures will also be above average. I think my prediction is that 2025 will set a new record for the hottest year ever.
I don’t understand people who say climate change isn’t real. The last 10 years have been the hottest on record and most of the climate scientists are saying we are the cause. I know the planet goes through cycles, but they take thousands of years to happen not decades, which is what we are seeing.
So my point I guess is will we have an autumn. It seems to have be a blink and you miss it event in the last few years, but I do love it. I love the start of winter well I have most years.
So I’m not doing spring time, sorry Dawn, it isn’t spring here, but it is autumn, so this is going to be my response to this theme.
The first gallery I have for you are photos from the swamp near me. This is the time of year that I love getting these misty images of it. When the mornings are colder and some mist hangs just above the water.
My second gallery is what I am seeing a lot of in my garden right now, dead flowers.
While those in the northern hemisphere will be enjoying the new buds and warmer temperatures, my garden is slowly shutting down for winter. There are many dead flowers all over my plants, almost too many for me to keep up with.
This a gallery of infrared dead flowers.
I want to thank Dawn for being our host and picking the theme this week. Please go and take a look at her post.
Participating in Monochrome Madness
If you would like to participate in this challenge please post photos on your blog and use the tag Monochrome-Madness, then we can all use the reader to see what you post.
You can also leave a pingback, do they still call them that? Basically, you put a link to the host’s monochrome madness post in your post and it leaves a link in the comment section.
Don’t forget to check out the Monochrome Madness page. On this page, the next theme is announced and there is also all the information for participating. Please go and check it out. Click on the Monochrome Madness heading in the menu.
I love photos of trees like this and these are great.
Thank you Ritva.
Yes, these seasonal challenges can be difficult for anyone living in the opposite hemisphere to the one setting them! But you’ve done a great job of bringing us some autumn instead. I love your first swamp photo in particular, it’s so beautiful
They are very difficult and make it so hard. Especially in challenges when you have to take the photos that week for the challenge. Thank you Sarah, I thought it would work, well I hoped anyway. Glad you like them SArah.
Eerily beautiful scenes.
Thank you Pepper.
Wonderful misty photos Leanne. I so enjoy a morning such as that.
Your garden photos for our season made me smile. They are great
I said I was thinking outside the box
https://bushboy.blog/2025/04/16/today-its-spring-emerging/
I love mornings like that, thank you so much Brian, yours made me laugh. lol
Ypu’ve dome well to show us spring as you move into autumn. i’ve kept mine simple today, here ….https://margaret21.com/2025/04/16/burgeoning-blooms-at-beningbrough/
Thank you Margaret.
Awesome!
Thanks Egidio.
Beautiful, now you just need a haunted house and some ghosts flying around.
NOw wouldn’t that be cool, lol. thank you.
These are beautiful- especially the first one (my fave)!
As for the weather, I too was wondering thismorning when Autumn would actually begin…It’s frustrating, as Summer is my LEAST favourite season…and it just drags on SO long. It’s draining. Autumn is my favourite, but I feel we’re being cheated of it this year! I do notice that Vic Autumn is always more shortlived than NSW Autumn. And- along with all the various undoubted human factors, there are actually many shorter cycles within the longer ones. ( I know this because I grew up on self sufficient farms where the awareness of being very dependent on Nature and her moods is acute). We have not long left ‘La Niña’ phase ( cooler; more rainfall) and have entered an ‘El Niño’ phase ( hotter, dryer). So this is yet another factor. These particular cycles are short(ish…..they can last a few years).But they do indeed seem quite extreme these last years, what with all the flooding up North, and now this heat and lack of rain down South.
I have my own personal more esoteric ideas, too, but I won’t get into them here, lol. But there’s a LOT of imbalance on the planet right now. Too many extremes; not enough moderation.. Anyway, sorry for my long comment! I do this…It’s why I often just say nothing instead.. (How ironic, given what I just said
)
Thank you, glad you like them.
I agree about summer, I hate it. This summer seems to have been for over 6 months.I think the extremes is what is part of the whole climate change thing, we will still get cold winters, but they might be really really cold, extreme so to speak. I think that is why they stopped called it global warming.
YOu are right, there is a lot of imbalance, I’m not a scientist, so I tend to believe what the people who study say, it is going to get harder and harder on us I think. No worries about the long comment, I invite discussion.
Dear Leanne, what a beautiful monochrome photographs, they are almost poetry of photography. Thank you, Love, nia
Thank you so much Nia.
Wonderful pics!
Thank you Sara.
It’s my pleasure, Leanne!
Those trees in the mist are hauntingly beautiful, Leanne.
Thank you Jean, I think the mist is the best way to get the trees.
Great post, Leanne!
Thank you Sue.
Beautiful images Leanne. Even in death, flowers are beautiful. We’re getting teased by Summer here. I’m hoping it won’t be as hot as last year, but with global warming, who knows.
Thank you Anne, I agree, I love dead flowers. I hope your summer isn’t too hot. Ours has be long, very long, can’t believe it is mid April and we are still using the air conditioner, that isn’t normal. We haven’t used the heater in the mornings at all and that isn’t normal either. I think we are over the heat. Still lots of days over 30 unfortunately.