Late summer in
Devon.
This year, unlike
last year, the trees are laden with ripening apples. It's too early for the
cider smell to saturate the air during the harvest; that will come in October.
Pears and plums have not fared so well, but the wheat is 'white to harvest' and
in some fields, farmers are growing an old-fashioned type that still is
gathered into stooks. The sight tugs at the heart. . .
It's the season
for shows, large and small. My hostess took me to the North Devon show, which,
alas, has become large and industrial. The younger dog's breeder had persuaded
her to enter him in the dog show which, thankfully, was small and local, though
fiercely competitive. This headstrong but also very laid-back young border
collie behaved like a seasoned veteran and walked away with the winner's
ribbon. He missed out on Best of Breed only by a whisker to his mother; he is
only 18 months old, and she has been at Crufts. It was his first and last show,
his owner says; it's just too easy to fall into that world of intrigue and back-biting,
but more important, he is a working dog. After his classes he knew he'd done
well; he loved the attention in the show ring. By the time we got home his
entire demeanour had changed, and he was somehow more grown up, though just as
sweet-natured as always.
Then on Thursday
we went to the weekly agility class. My hostess's other dog, a nine-year-old
collie, is a whiz at agility and has a canine version of a Mensa mind. She gets
fed up with the clumsy humans when they get the hand signals and body language mixed up;
she's very tolerant for a while, but sometimes quits in disgust. She seems
to make allowances for me, as I have only just started to learn. My hostess very generously
lets me handle this older collie on these occasions, and we did some new (to me) sequences.
Martin Buber would have liked agility: it demands an I-Thou relationship. This older dog's attention is like a
laser, and she is a small gazelle when she flows through the obstacles at
speed.
After class we
were asked if we'd bring the dogs to a small show on Sunday in aid of several
animal charities, and we agreed. The teacher must have been very hard up for
volunteers. But the old dog, like the young dog, knew something was up and her
behaviour was impeccable, much better than any dog there (including the
instructor's). And she ran the courses, which were much more complex than
anything I'd faced before, with perfect attention to me, almost seeming to
float in mid-air as she waited for the next command. She (and I) were in a kind
of ecstasy, in that warp where time is suspended. She is getting on and
starting to look like an old dog, but her owner said that as we ran the
circuits her face was animated with joy. When we got home, the young dog realised
that something had given the old dog renewed confidence, and showed his
displeasure at having to share the limelight: his nose was distinctly out of
joint—and their play-fighting in the big pasture yesterday morning before I
left was particularly intense.
Then it was back
to Oxford, trying to catch up with myself. I came home to a garden that looks
like a jungle: pumpkins of various types running everywhere, climbing
trellises, tomatoes, beans, sweet peas—anything they can get their tendrils on.
The tomatoes themselves are laden with fruit; there was a bushel (literally) of beans waiting to
be picked, cucumbers a foot long, potatoes erupting everywhere.
But there is a bit
of a down side too: ten days ago the first breath of early autumn came on the
breeze. Plants are hastening to wind up their business for the year, tipping towards
the next season of dropping seeds and falling asleep. Although autumn is my
favourite season, it is hard to lose the abundance of the garden, which, with
the cold spring we had, was at its full glory for only a few short weeks.
Still, I'm
grateful, very grateful, for this tiny patch of earth where I can plant and
water, and watch God make the garden grow...