Lovely fresh and vigorous painting Adrienne. The path is definitely working better (love the colour) now its edges are softened with plants. I think you could be bolder still with shadows on it but I appreciate shadows are difficult to do well, and it helps to have reference to work from. As Lucy and Jeff have said you have conjured an amazingly inviting and appealing scene -which will be tonic to the eyes when we face winter again.
I hope you have a lot of fun with the textural VVG one and I look forward to seeing it.