Autumn is when old-fashioned practicality gets to strut her stuff in all her forms - and lots of people start to preserve fruit. Picture / Babiche Martens
Is it fashionable to be practical? It's autumn now, and an air of domestic capability seems to be the most sought-after accessory du jour. This is an observation based on Instagram, which remains the most reliable barometer of human activity ever known. Admittedly, I only follow 300 people, the majority
of whom are here in New Zealand, so perhaps it would be unscientific to attempt to extrapolate beyond the bounds of our shores.
Better to say with certainty that all anyone in this country is doing right now is gathering up vast quantities of crimson and/or green hued fruit and mashing, boiling and baking said fruit into tasty food.
Except Lorde. She's in Brazil, according to Instagram, singing to a festival audience of thousands, wearing this season's Zambesi rose-print skater skirt. She looks happy and gorgeous, but she may be wishing she was at home in Devonport, making feijoa crumble, for all we know.
If she does, you couldn't blame her. Not when everyone else looks to be having such fun boiling up great big shiny pots full of organic figs and filling jam jars with chutneys the colour of old shoes.
The novelty of these sorts of images is short-lived; all the cute, shabby chic kitchens start to look the same after a while, and there are only so many ways you can photograph a pile of fruit. But nonetheless, there's something comforting about the bushels of preserving-shots that start to abound about this time every year. They reaffirm a bigger picture, signalling as they do the end of summer and the advent of autumn. Lovely, comforting, plenteous autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, season of domestic goddess catwalk-ery.
