OK, a simple question. When does summer begin and end? Try Googling it, and try not to kick your screen in frustration at the many dozens of opinions and lack of authoritative definitions.

In some cases summer is considered to start at the summer solstice and continue to the Autumnal equinox. In others it's based on calendar months, in part because those tie more closely to the long day / hot weather characteristics that we associate with summer days.

In Australia we generally use the calendar months technique, though I can't find the official source for that. However the seasonal summaries issued by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology use the calendar month method, meaning that at the end of today yet another summer has passed. And I knew the exact shot that I wanted to take for that.

Unfortunately Mother Nature screwed me over on it. The plan was for sunlight to be filtering through the venetian blinds onto the last of the summer fruit, chilled and fresh out of the 'fridge. (Hence the slight "frostiness" that you can see.) But instead, just as the light was alllllmost in the right position, the skies clouded over and a thunderstorm arrived. And not one of those awesome Great Southern Land type thunderstorms either; just enough rumbling and grumbling and moisture spitting (and cloud cover) to rob me of the light that I was waiting for. It's been about an hour and a half now and even if the sun comes back out again, it'll be in the wrong position. I therefore had to use one of the setup shots instead.

Sigh, maybe next year...

Bikini model photographers will probably get more hits than me... but they don't get to eat their subjects for dessert. Or at least I'd hope not.