Autumn Livery

With the colder nights, the leaves are beginning to fall from trees, carpeting the ground in red, yellow and gold.

Gardeners in the gardens at Princes Street were busy on hands and knees removing the flowering annuals and raking the soil to a rich brown, sprinkled with newly fallen petals and russet leaves.

The cuckoo in the floral clock had missed his flight to warmer climes but seemed happy enough to chirp the hours as we passed.

This tree at the west end of the gardens looked startlingly bright against the grey stone backdrop of St Cuthbert's Church In Lothian Road.

Unfortunately not all the trees in other parks will live to don their autumn cloaks.
There are 16 elm trees red crossed and numbered in the Meadows alone, and as I type the tree surgeons are removing bark from an enormous old tree on the other side of the railings.

I'm hoping to mark its demise with a blip when the day comes.
It has stood in the same spot for more than a hundred years, given refuge to birds and squirrels, provided a watering spot for countless dogs including the odd unsociable human, and given generations of patients in the old RIE a vision of greenery outside their grim hospital wards.

It will be a sad day witnessing its transformation into a heap of leaf mould and wood chippings.