A different kind of autumn

When I first arrived here in Jerusalem the land was dry and parched, after the usual months with hardly any rain from May to October. We got the first rain in November. The normal pattern is that the frequency of the rain slowly builds up until the peak of the wet season in January and February. So far it hasn't built up much, but there has been enough occasional rains to refresh the land.

Green grass has appeared in previously brown areas of land, and other small plants have also come to life. It's a kind of spring. But this is happening at the same time as the cooler nights and shorter days have been prompting the trees to lose their leaves and hibernate for a while - normal autumn behaviour, in other words.

So autumn here is not like back home in Britain, where it is more uniformly a time for plants to scale back their operations. Here it is a mixed time, a time of both falling leaves and new growth.

I can't help feeling that this difference in the seasons is an important factor in understanding the Biblical vision of nature. I haven't quite worked out how yet.