Autumn Colours.

Pete has spent the day battling with his maths assignment. It's been made more stressful by the fact that unlike the IT assignments it can't be submitted on line but has to be posted which reduces the deadline by 2 days. The decorating continues and I'm nearly there apart from building a cupboard and repairing or replacing the door. Romas helped me take the carpets outside so we could use the old carpet as a template. At one point we had a little lie down on our posh carpeted patio! Part of the old carpet , which was already recycled, will be used as a mat for Romas to put his drums on at gigs and we cut out some smaller bits to protect the carpet in Pete's new car.

It has been almost dry today but I have forced myself to get on with the decorating and not do any gardening. I had a little walk around outside after a sparrow hawk flew past only a few feet away from the window but I couldn't see what it was up to.

The big tree in the corner of the garden is rapidly losing its leaves and the lawns are all covered with dry brown leaves. The beech hedges are coppery gold but once the leaves fall the new buds won't break until the first week in April.

Following a suggestion from Gemma I crawled around on the wet bank to get some shots of the sun shining through the autumn leaves. This was my favourite shot of some azalea leaves that are turning a rich red.

This spirea is not so dramatic but still looks quite good.