Seasonal Change
Social media is already awash with harbingers of autumn and it can only increase as the trees start to change colour. Terroir was going to write something hard hitting and original about seasonal change but that seems to be getting harder every year. The internet has everything you could ever want to know on climate change and how to define a season.
Climate and weather seem a pretty obvious way to define seasonal change. We in the UK still think of summer as warmer and drier and winter as colder and wetter. We book our foreign holidays to avoid monsoon seasons or to exploit snow for ‘winter’ sports. Or at least we try to forecast when these conditions will apply. With climate change, this is becoming increasingly tricky.
But surely seasons are still a valid concept? In Britain, we have devised a number of ways to define ‘seasons’.
Astronomical seasons in Britain are based on the earth’s orbit around the sun and the timing of our equinoxes and solstices. Thus the Met Office defines the astronomical seasons for the next 12 months as
Autumn: 22nd September 2024 to 21st December 2024
Winter: 21st December 2024 to 20th March 2025
Spring: 20th to March to 21st June
Summer: 21st June 2025 to 22nd September 2025
On that basis, therefore, and at the time of writing, it is still summer in the UK.
Meteorological seasons, however, are strictly defined by specific and unchanging dates to ‘coincide with our Gregorian calendar, making it easier for meteorological observing and forecasting to compare seasonal and monthly statistics’ (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/seasons/winter/when-does-winter-start). The Met Office defines these periods as:
Spring - March, April, May
Summer - June, July, August
Autumn - September, October, November and
Winter - December, January, February. By this definition, we are currently in autumn!
The church, the legal profession and bureaucracy have also had a crack at defining the seasons. Quarter Days in Britain seem to have been around since at least Medieval times. Based on religious festivals which roughly coincided with the equinoxes and the solstices, they were the dates when rents were paid, staff hired and educational terms started. Dates changed a bit in the early 1750s due to the move from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, and to harmonise with Scotland, but the basic principle has survived.
Today, the English and Welsh Quarter Days are:
Lady Day: the Feast of the Annunciation, 25th March
Midsummer Day: the Nativity of St John the Baptist, 24th June
Michaelmas: the Feast of St Michael and All Angels, 29th September
Christmas: 25th December
According to this, we are still in summer having not yet reached the start of the Michaelmas term, due on the 29th September.
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_days) quotes The Times (G. C. M Young 15/04/26) with the following useful memory aid:
‘Assuming you can remember when Christmas occurs, a useful mnemonic to place quarter days is to count the letters of the relevant months. Thus, in March, there being five letters, you can know that the quarter day is the 25th. June has four letters and the quarter day is the 24th, and September, having nine letters, has its quarter day on the 29th.’
Phenology is the study of seasonal changes in plants and animals, and is how we – as human animals – tend to judge the changing of the seasons by observing when specific plants start to flower or hedgehogs to hibernate. Both Terroirs North and South agree that this is an early autumn.
Here is our evidence:
Terroir south:
dropping temperatures since before the end of August and torrential rain storms
last of the beans and tomatoes, and full on apple harvesting
garden visits which now depend on seed heads much more than late blooms
Terroir north:
feels like October - 9◦C and wintry showers
Teasel dieback and blackberries early (although bilberries pretty much ‘on time’)
Ling (Calluna vulgaris) flowering significantly early and now over in many places where it would normally be in full flower (image right)
Both Teams are experiencing late second flowerings (in the garden, not figuratively).
South - chives, rosemary, lavender and roses
North – apple, honeysuckle, teasle and also roses.
Instagram evidence: bringing tender plants in early, rowan berries early, fungus early, trees turning early, onions lifted already.
One sign of seasonally change is certain, however: Christmas cards in the shops.