autumn colours and brass monkeys

driving through the countryside of kansas and missouri i've been struck by the similarity of different landscapes to various areas of the uk (i have this annoying habit of comparing and contrasting every place i visit to my homeland) - a 100 mile round trip through the north eastern environs of kansas state when we first arrived yielded rural scenes comparable in turns to the cotswolds, the north and south downs, salisbury plain, the flat areas of lincolnshire, the west country moorlands.....the list goes on....

yesterday, however, as we drove west to the flint hills of mid-kansas, i found that i couldn't make such comparisons because of the intensity of the autumn colours in the foliage surrounding us - no autumn season i have ever experienced in england could have prepared me for the variety and richness of the fall colours i have seen this month

something else i hadn't been prepared for was the sudden climate change that has happened here over the past week - local people have told me that the temperature can change very suddenly, going up and down the scale quite dramatically in a matter of hours, but this is something that's difficult to conceive of until you actually go through it - my experience of autumn in the uk is that it gives way to winter very gradually during november, december and january, as the temperature generally goes down slowly - so i was taken unawares when the weather suddenly turned from a pleasant balmy autumn heat in the low 20s to an almost freezing 4 degrees celsius with a bitingly cold wind chill factor in just a few hours in the middle of last week

last night there was frost on the roof of our car and looking at the forecast for tonight i'm not surprised to see it will be minus 1 degree once the sun goes down - the prospect of sydney and its summer heat becomes more appealing with every shrinking ball on a brass monkey