Countdown to summer

Today is the shortest day of the year in the southern hemisphere; from tomorrow summer will be on its way!

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This fellow looks like something out of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which is chock-full of descriptions of nature in mid-winter... an English winter, of course, not a New Zealand one, but it doesn't matter ;)

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The Desert Plateau (aka Mordor) in winter.

Frodo's song to Goldberry

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O slender as a willow wand! O clearer than clear water!
O reed by the living pool! Fair river daughter!
O spring time and summer time, and spring again after
O wind on the waterfall, and the leaves' laughter!

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (London: Harper Collins, 1996), 139.