September may very well be reminding July*, but what's that November is whispering to March?

Two weeks and it will be the Equinox. Fantastic word, isn't it, equinox? I like words which manage to have a q and an x in them. Quixotical little words, worthy of our admiration. Love, even. Aren't they? I might like to start a wee collection of them, right here on this post. Donations gratefully accepted.

That's not what I had in mind to say at all, though, you'll be relieved to hear. I was, instead, intending to blether on about the fact that the sun and, hence, light are definitely returning. My balcony is winning the battle against the snow (incredibly, we can actually sit on the chair again). The day has been absolutely beautiful - sunshine, real, proper, warming sunshine, I can't remember when the last time was (possibly September), all day long, blue sky, the great-tits doing their spring ti-ti-tyy thing (it's what they say, right), the light making blazing colour displays of the snow (which most certainly is not white).

I know all this because I've visited my balcony several times today (okay, I did take the dog out for a pee earlier, too), opting, instead of walking outdoors with my face turned towards the sun all day like every other Helsinki-ite with legs, for knitting, watching TV, reading various articles on the Guardian online, other online blips, even writing a bit. So? It's my birthright not to go out and enjoy anything, I'm telling you that for free.

There has been so much snow this year. Three months and as many metres, I kid you not. I may exaggerate a bit, a tiny bit, in the metric number, however, but it's not a hanging offence. Snow in all its original, ur-snow form - white, always, even downtown (where the nouveau post-modern snow is more often than not an interesting and very specific hue of brown, if it's in its snow incarnation, or grey, if its slush. Shut up), because there's been new snow added so often it just hasn't had time to turn any other colour (except for light reasons, as I mentioned above), coating branches of trees with crystal fingers, cars with undiggable-off fur hats, carving the Himalayas along the sides of footpaths and pavements (often enclosing some cars which got rather more fur hat than they might have bargained for - or their drivers, either, for that matter). Icicles like glass skulls of aliens, long-tusked. So much snow for so long it's almost been like my childhood. So much snow for so long it is utterly unbelievable anything living should ever appear ever again.

It might, of course, not. It remains to be seen.