I've just about finished collecting leaves now for this year.  Maybe a bag or two more if I run into a mother lode somewhere (bags in the car at the ready) but the leaves are pretty well off the trees where we live.  Total now is 154 and most of them are largish bags.  I'm so pleased that we won't have to ration the leaves this winter in the way we did last year.  I'm pleased as well that a lot of the bags are recycled - either reused or would-never-have-been-used ones such as uncollected charity bags.

The school chicks are all grown up now and I keep waiting for the two females to lay their first egg.  I'm also waiting for an angry neighbour to come knocking on my door because the cockerel is now in fine voice.  He is a lovely lad and very nice natured and has been a pet all his life but this is suburbia and I've only got away with keeping him so far because dawn is getting later.

This morning, he started crowing at 7.20 and I rushed out and kept feeding him bits of various things until it was nearer 8.00 to give the neighbours a lie-in for Saturday.  Like most males, the way to his heart is definitely through his stomach. At dawn, there were no clouds in the sky here and so it got light that bit earlier.  I'm in trouble here because I've become very fond of him.  My farmer friend can't give him a home and the only other person I know who might have him lives 80 miles away.  Between now and Christmas, I just don't have that sort of time free to drive all that way and I don't think he would appreciate being stuck in a cat basket all that time either.   My farmer friend, being a farmer and therefore thinking like one, says to stop being silly, put him in the pot and get over it.  So I am getting in a turmoil here.  Anybody want a really nice, friendly alarm clock?