There's something very strange about writing something sub-tropical on a day like today.
I've been playing with a digital camera for a couple of weeks: lots of shots of surprised-looking cats with glowing eyes, a number of magnificently cute photos of the girls, one accidentally interesting self-portrait (which we may even use as the new front page of the website) which was just an experiment to see how little light the camera needed, and, every week, shots of the lake view from my writing-cabin window.
I showed them to my wife, this evening, on the screen. When she saw today's photos of the lake, snow on the edges of things and frosting the bones of the trees, she said, "Oh. Do you have a setting to make them come out in black and white like that?"
"No," I said. "These are colour photos. Honest."
But she was right, sort of. Everything had turned into blacks and whites and misty greys. No colour anywhere.
That's how you know Winter's started. The colours are the first things to go.