Green and gold

I was up very early this morning as I was expecting a delivery at 7am and I did not want to be receiving the delivery in my pyjamas! For Gavin's birthday I bought him a beautiful modern granite bench, and the supplier phoned me last night to say that he had booked in to a local hotel and would come to me first thing in the morning - he had come up from Somerset and was doing several deliveries of their products in the area.

After he left I quickly went out for a run with Murdoch, which went well until a fox dashed across our path and I nearly fell as Murdoch pulled on the lead to go after it - the momentum of the run meant it was difficult to slow down and control Murdoch!

Bach home I then had a meeting with the lawn expert from the garden centre. The news was not good, the lawn can be fixed but at quite a cost. The developer tried to create a soak-away for the clay soil by filling about a metre deep with gravel stones, failed to put in a soak away pit or any piping, and then laid about 2 inches of topsoil and then planted the turf - there was no way it would ever grow on that! We have to dig out a good 40cm of gravel, put in a proper soak-away pit with pipes and then lay a decent amount of topsoil before planting the grass. Such a pity the developers tried to cut costs and did not do it properly the first time.

On the way to the hairdresser I saw these trees that were showing lovely autumn colour. Others are still very much in summer mode and are very green.