Okay, so maybe I'm being a bit dramatic with that title. Yet with a forecast low of 15C later in the week, frosty mornings and a little more rain, plus the date fact that there is only two weeks left of Autumn in Australia before June 1 and Winter, I guess it's okay to feel a little sad that Autumn's colours are truly fading to give way to the greys and muted greens of a Victorian Winter.

Here, it's our maple tree that's the last to fall. The apples, pears, quinces and stone fruits have shed their leaves for the most part, and though they sadly hang on to a purple leaf or a few ruined oranges, they're hunkering down in the cold soil in relief: the summer has past, and they can, like me, recharge in the wet soil.

Whilst the reds of the maple are visible from my bathroom window, so too is the reds of the gum tree. In a wonderful symbiosis, it's the gum that has kept the maple alive - it shelters it against the hot and dry winds and provides shade, and as I water the maple from the fishpond, the gum gets a splash too. How happy they must be to be paired so.

Nothing ever truly dies for the Winter in Australia - there's still resplendent pops of crimson and this red-flowering always seems a bustle with fighting birds. The whole tree vibrates with them. Sure, the natives will slow their growth and winter's blades will slice through the most tender of them, but for us, Winter is also a time of planting and potential in much the way Spring can be for more snowy climates. We'll plant more trees this Winter, hoping they'll get their roots truly down into the lower soils so they are ready when the ground heats up and dries out. We always lose some, but there's more gains than losses.

The nandina or sacred bamboo is also proper popping with berries, always a bright relief against the constant greenery. Whilst our garden does consist mainly of natives, there's elements of the northern hemisphere that break it up and sit as reminds of the lands from which we've come. The silver birch sits pretty and delicately amongst grevellieas, the fairy hiding elders also hide fairy wrens and smaller birds from the bullying of magpies, and the poplars shake their grey undersided leaves to carpet the north east corner of the property. It seems without them, I wouldn't know winter was coming at all.