Summer visitors

 

Summer visitors

Arthur goes to bed with at least one toy.

Arthur has come to stay for a couple of weeks while his owner visits the South of France for a few days. It is a working holiday for her. She was recently made redundant but managed to get another short-term contract, so is working remotely. She has gone with a pregnant friend whose parents have a holiday home there.

Arthur was always going to stay with us, but the cats had to come, too. The cat-sitting arrangements fell through while Susannah waited for confirmation of her new job. Solomon, Lenny, and Zula are safely ensconced in what we laughingly call the South Wing, East Wing, West Wing?? another part of the house anyway, where she and Frankie lived for almost six years. It’s just the three old bedrooms of our children, nothing spectacular.

Herschel and Jellicoe are fascinated and sit near the dividing door when I go in to ‘see to the cats.’ Arthur dances around outside, not desperate to visit his housemates. They are not nearly as tolerant as our felines, who give him a good ignoring while attempting to steal his food.

                                        Stopping for a portrait

Arthur is a very obedient little dog – a working Cocker spaniel, with boundless energy and the sweetest nature. Out of the house for a walk, he dashes hither and yon, but never goes far from whoever is walking him, currently Barry. He is polite to other dogs and people but is not really interested in them. Susannah has trained him exceptionally well. He is a great companion for her and an alert guard dog, though he would greet any intruder with immense joy.

I now have two dogs at my feet. Dogs seem to need more contact and reassurance than bitches. Roxy comes to us now and again for attention, but she’s much more independent than the boys. I suppose that’s the nature of the beast. The girls instinctively nurture their young.

 
Ready for morning cuddles

. . . and so the year rolls on . . .

. . . and so the year rolls on . . .

The UK is about to celebrate the Early May Bank Holiday on Monday 1st May. This means that families may get together for a barbecue, likely to take place under lowering skies and/or driving rain. Others may choose to take a long weekend break, clogging the motorways in a bid to escape the humdrum of daily life. Those who choose to stay at home often decide to use the extra leisure time to catch up on (or start) some gardening, decorating or d-i-y projects. This results in logjams of cars streaming to garden centres and d-i-y stores and then attempting to find parking spaces. 

Customers impatient to begin their appointed tasks shoulder their way through crowds of other like-minded souls, locate their items and then queue to pay for them. By the time they reach home again, some two or three hours later, the will to achieve anything is dissipating. Of course, there are some organized folks who have already laid in their supplies but these are the people who work steadily at keeping everything in their houses and gardens tickety-boo, surely the most sensible way to proceed in life.

UK citizens enjoy – or endure – just eight Bank Holidays a year and for only two of them, Christmas Day and Easter Sunday, are the large shops shut (though not in Scotland on Easter Sunday) Small shops are free to open as they please on these days. Nonetheless, particularly if visitors are to be hosted, a siege mentality takes hold and huge amounts of provisions are amassed, with every conceivable potential taste being accommodated. It’s no good reminding anyone that the shops will be open again in twenty-four hours’ time.

The next surge in bulk buying, that is, the next Bank Holiday, will be at the end of May. Perhaps Summer will have arrived by then. If not, surely the August Bank Holiday will come up trumps – and speaking of Trump, who knows what he may have set in motion by then.

Anyway, whatever you are planning, even if it’s nothing, enjoy your weekend J

fibonacci or doggerel by any other name . . .

Image by Dr. René Hoffmann, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 

The challenge from The Imaginary Garden with Real Toads is to write a poem in the Fibonacci form - 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. It appealed to me this rainy Sunday morning and so I over-egged the pudding, so to speak, and produced three poor examples, all reversing the sequence. The first is inspired by the Nautilus image and yes, I know it's not a mollusc, but that's the first thing that came to mind! 

Snail

Shell

Empty

Abandoned

Once mollusc’s retreat

Cast aside for eternity

Unless another entity

Chances upon it

Fancies it

Moves in

Lives

There.

The second deals with the Ashes test matches in which two nations, England and Australia, play a series of five matches to decide the destination of the Ashes, a tiny urn containing the ashes of two cricket balls. 

Dawn

Drear

Summer

Grey clouds loom

No cricket today

The Ashes have been decided

Though England’s batsmen derided

For playing poorly

But they won.

Lucky

Some

Say.

The third effort refers to our house full of dogs, with our daughter's three Labradors, spending their summer holidays. 

What?

How

Many

Dogs are there

Staying in your house this summer?

Six Labradors, one Dalmatian

Three dogs will go home next Tuesday

Leaving just the four

Who live here

Always

With

Us.

Words for Wednesday

Words for Wednesday

Delores from ‘The Feathered Nest’ offers six words as a writing prompt – recalcitrant, fangs, dithering, glassy, rodeo, wet. Why not visit her and see what other writing has been prompted?

It was summer and the season of school fayres and community fêtes with every group hoping to raise funds. In a bid to appeal to a wider audience the local church had decided to rename their Flower Festival the Floral Rodeo. People came out of curiosity, hoping for prancing stallions in the aisles but found instead dithering officials apologising for any disappointment they had caused. Recalcitrant children, dragged along by their parents, bared their fangs in a semblance of good humour as a rather wet young curate tried to engage them in conversation. Glassy-eyed visitors, anxious to escape his enthusiastic exhortations to join the congregation, gladly donated substantial amounts of loose change to the church restoration fund and gratefully made their exit to the cool air of an English summer.

My World Tuesday The Last Day of Summer

To see more My World  posts please click here.Thanks to the My World team who host this meme.

Whether 31^st August is the last day of Summer is a moot point but it felt like that when we took our dogs for an early morning walk. Our canine visitors have gone home and we left Buddy, our old gentleman, at home. A soft mist hung in the air for the sun, though awake, was not yet strong enough to defeat it. The dogs trotted along happily, tails wagging, noses working hard to assimilate and analyse all the fascinating scents left by others who had passed that way, human, domesticated and wild.

Jenna leaps after the Kong  . . . 

. . . followed by Gus

As we approached the first ponds Jenna and Gus dashed forward for their first frolic. Frodo went in for a leisurely bathe and then rejoined me.

The advance of the webs on an unsuspecting Frodo!

In the sun the tall grasses sparkled with dew-bejewelled gossamer in every direction, the work of a thousand tiny spiders. The ponds are full again after heavy rains and the Labradors thoroughly enjoyed their retrieving practice.

We walked on up the hill, appreciating the clean, fresh air and bright sun in the blue sky. It promised to be a fine day and as we watched aircraft silently cutting a swathe through the heavens the promise seemed to be confirmed by vapour trails dissipating rapidly in the still air. 

Thistles are still flowering but most are producing thistledown. The bracken too is beginning to change colour and soon will die down, changing the landscape yet again. 

We returned to the starting point of our walk through light woodland, carpeted with decades of fallen leaves, sunlight finding paths through tangled branches to cast spotlights and shadows wherever it could. Our footfalls were silent on the soft peaty ground until we emerged into sunlight once more.

We returned home with three happy, tired dogs. It was a wonderful start to the day.    

In the garden . . .

I'm not an expert gardener but I do enjoy our garden. It is alive with birds and bees and butterflies and later in the year the dragonflies and damselflies will hawk and hunt and mate around the pond. I sometimes buy on impulse from garden centres and think later where I'll put new plants. Consequently there is little plan or pattern to our small plot. It is not tidy and everything grows abundantly in glorious disarray. Somehow, though, it seems to work. It is pretty and scented and colourful.

I enjoy seeing the faithful perennials come back to life. Kerria Japonica flowers brightly and bravely for many weeks, its sunny yellow brightening up dark corners and darker days. Lily of the Valley and Aquilegia, which disappear completely in winter, emerge in April. Mint, growing by the pond, is tall and strong and has a wonderful, mouth-watering scent when bruised. Forget-me-nots, pink and blue, bloom much more shrinkingly than the violets, which I love to see, though I have never planted them, and which glow in the sunshine and happily spread further every year.
There are moments of pure joy, caught out of the corner of my eye – the green of Choisya Ternata's older leaves gracefully complementing the slightly darker hue of the Laurel. Last week I noticed the purple flowers of Honesty blooming next to the bright lime green (or is it lemon yellow?) of our Common Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) 'Dart's Gold'.

Cuckoo?

We are becoming adept at harnessing Dominie to her Doggon' Wheels (she doesn't use them indoors) and when she is detached from Barry, who helps her up inclines, she enjoys the freedom of stopping where she chooses or of joining the rest of the pack at a particularly enticing sniff. She picks up speed going downhill and positively skips along.

In the last couple of days we have gone to a different wood to walk and the going has been softer and easier for her. Decades of fallen leaves have mulched into a sweet-smelling carpet and there are many routes to be taken through the trees. It's always a pleasure to walk with the dogs and even more so when the location is fresh to them. The smells are new and the terrain unfamiliar. When we let the dogs out of the car on the first day they were like small children set free in a toy shop, not knowing which way to turn or what to try first. The woods were full of birdsong last evening towards sunset and we suddenly realised that neither of us has heard a cuckoo this year. We know that cuckoo numbers are declining; apparently the population has decreased by 37% in the last fifteen years. What a shame it would be if the cuckoo no longer visited these shores. Those two pure notes of the cuckoo's song lift the spirit and declare that Summer is truly on the way.

Sumer is icumen in

I could shut my eyes and still know that summer is well on its way. On this sunny April Sunday my ears are under assault from an army of lawnmowers;

Mowers to left of me,
Mowers to right of me,
Mowers in front of me,
Roared and thundered
Mine not to make reply,
Mine not to reason why,
Mine but to sit and sigh,
While green grass is sundered.
(Apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

. . . but oh! the peace, the calm, the lovely silence when the mowers cease and the ear drums stop ringing and the birds can once more make themselves heard.

'Sumer Is Icumen In' is a traditional English folk canon and a six-part polyphonic song which was composed around 1260, at a time when 'modern' music was commonly in two or three-part polyphony.

Svmer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
and springþ þe wde nu.
Sing cuccu!!

Awe bleteþ after lomb,
lhouþ after calue cu,
Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ.
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes þu cuccu.
ne swik þu nauer nu!
Sing cuccu nu, Sing cuccu!

Pes
Sing cuccu, Sing cuccu nu!

Summer is a-coming in
Loudly sing cuckoo
Groweth seed and bloweth mead
and springs the wood anew
Sing cuckoo!

Ewe bleateth aft-er lamb,
Calf loweth after cow,
Bullock starteth, buck farteth,
Merry sing cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!
Well singest thou cuckoo,
Nor cease thou never now!
Sing cuckoo now, Sing cuckoo!

Foot (or Bass)

Sing cuckoo, Sing cuckoo now!

The manuscript containing performance instructions was found in Reading Abbey though it may not have been written there. It is now housed at the British Library. The language is Middle English (Wessex dialect).