It’s Spring!!!

I have three favourite seasons, and they are: Summer, Spring, and Autumn, in that order. Winter can F right off, as the saying goes, and fortunately, we’re now at the point where it will start to do exactly that. It’s such a very good thing that I hardly have words to express how good it is, which is a bit of a problem for a blogger. I’ll soldier on nevertheless.

Winter was actually kind of normal, in my opinion, but it felt unusually cold, or was it just that we haven’t had a “normal” winter for a few years? I honestly don’t know, but there were plenty of folks I talked to who felt especially cold this past winter, so the perception, at least, is real.

August was probably the best month of this year’s winter, with extended periods of sunny days and milder temperatures—until the end of the month, when waves of stormy weather washed over of the country. The forecasted/expected Spring weather is that at first we’ll see more of the same, which makes sense, of course. And yeat, it IS a new season, and things will change.

Part of the reason that we had so much torrential rain (especially the top of the South Island) is that ocean to the west of New Zealand was warmer than normal, and that fuelled the torrential rains. Laready, though, the seas around the country have cooled somewhat, though they can still supercharge rainstorms, if slightly less so than in this past winter.

New Zealand had the La Niña effect for three years, which is why summmer 2022-2023 was so stormy: We had a “strong” La Niña, which led to the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods and the devastation of Cyclone Gabrielle. The current prediction is that La Niña will continue to weaken and be neutral by summer.

Having said all that, we’re told to expect an “all of the above” Spring, with some of Winter’s horrible weather continuing, but alongside the nicer periods, too. So, yay? Nay? We’ll see.

Meanwhile, and recognising that no one controls the weather (neither the USA’s Democrats nor “Jewish Space Lasers” can do that…), I’m pushing ahead with plans for summer. Over the next couple weeks I plan to finalise my plans for what I’ll do my gardens this year (spoiler: tomatoes will return this year), and, more immediately, I’m going to clean out my VegePod and then use it as a greenhouse to start seeds to plant out in later October (which is like late April on the Northern Hemisphere). Rest assured: My gardening revolution will be blogger-ised.

So, here we are: A new season bringing warmer—eventually. But despite the fact that wintry weather will hang around for awhile, I think this is actually a really good time of year precisely because it’s a great time to prepare for better times, and that’s a great thing.

Onward!

For those who care about it, the September Equinox—the only correct name for that event, regardless of hemisphere—will arrive in New Zealand at 6:19am NZST on Tuesday, 23 September 2025. Related: At 2am the following Sunday, 28 September 2025, New Zealand will “Spring ahead” to New Zealand Dayight Time (NZDT).