Different kinds of firsts

It has been a strange couple of weeks. We did our first agility show since Honiton last September when Pop looked and felt so good. Olympia doesn't really count and in any case as far as we knew then Pop just had a bit of arthritis. I had been putting off starting up again with agility but knew sooner or later I'd have to get back to it in the ring; Nellie wants to do it and I should not let my feelings about losing Pop and Henry prevent her having fun with me. Yet still it was hard to walk up to the rings at Easter Celebration. I felt really exposed. I didn't want to talk to anyone and I didn't want anyone really to talk to me. It was enough just to go through the motions. Which we did. It became easier as the weekend progressed as I knew that those who knew me realised I was feeling like that and left me to it. Thankyou.

It was Nellie's first time sleeping in her van crate all by herself at night. She is the only dog I have loved that likes to go and snooze in her van crate even when we are perhaps in the 'garden' or in the caravan. We leave the van open and she can choose for herself. She likes her own company (like me!) and likes the peace of it (like me!)but really I think she worked out that lots of fun things start there. Inevitably she is in it before we go up to the ring (ooh we are doing agility) or we are arriving at the hall to do my training classes (ooh I get to do things with mom and meet my friends and 'aunties') or when we arrive at the field (ooh ooh we are doing agility) or when we arrive at a place where it is clear we are going for a walk (ooh ooh we are going for a walk!). So, yes, she likes 'cratey'. We thought she'd get too lonely at night but no, the association and the inclination are ingrained and so she takes herself off to 'strawberry' who she uses as a pillow when she decides she wants to go to bed and then, in the morning, she hops onto the passenger seat (the crate is left open all night) to bark at all those people who are heading past off to the exercise area. She seems to have adapted to being without Pop.

I haven't. I still have to take a deep breath everytime I am reminded that she really isn't with us any more.

Our caravan sofa blankets still have Henry and Pop hairs attached to them, and in Henry's case probably always will have. Her harness still has her hair and the mud from her last New Forest walks on it and still smells of her. Perhaps I am just a little bit stuck at the moment. I haven't yet accepted that she can only be with me in spirit. It really isn't enough. And starting agility again reminds me even more of this.

There have been happier firsts in the last couple of weeks too:

Whilst walking in the New Forest I spotted a water snake in one of the bigger streams. The only time I have seen snakes in a river was in Australia and we were swimming in the river.....They brushed past our legs on their way down stream, harmless and busy creatures. I have never seen a snake swimming in this country but it turns out that it was a grass snake, and that they are often referred to as 'water snakes' as they love nothing more than a pool or ditch or stream to live in, and catch the odd frog or fish to eat from. I stood and watched 'til its lithe body had coiled itself in a tangle of small branches hooked up by the current at the edge of the water, avoiding the 'danger' of my shadow. Quite something.

Found a whole nest at the bottom of the garden last week - the first one I have found with what is clearly Nellie and Archie's hair lining it. This is a shame as this must be a recent nest that maybe the wind caught? And it would have been a lovely nest - all warm and snug inside.




The construction is incredible, don't you think? I have put the dogs' hair in the hedge the last few times I've groomed them through March and April and watched assorted birds (including several pairs of goldfinch) gathering it up in beakfuls ready for their babies. Whichever birds built this one have an enormous job ahead to build another one.

We have been eating our own salad now for a couple of weeks - the first ones of the year. Have planted three different mixed leaves combinations including oriental mixed leaves, plus some single leaf slad leaves, lots of rocket and radish and along with the winter mix from the green house, parsley and chopped mint from the pot on the patio, we are crunching our way through enormous bowls of really fresh leaves. Such an easy thing to grow, quick cropping and all the mixes and the single leaf, plus the rocket, are 'cut and come again'. It's like magic!

The veg patch looks very efficient now - although we hope to move the chicken pen to the other side of the brick store next autumn and then I can have a couple more raised beds and have the compost bays rebuilt in this part too. This was planned for last winter but with losing Pop we lost the impetus to get on with it. So it will have to wait now. I am mollycoddling my sweetpeas a bit having had a hint of a frost couple of nights ago - they look like deranged wedding veils.





Iain created a couple of brick edged places within the patch so I could plant our first red currants and our first raspberries. We are hoping the two from our neighbour will produce fruit this year, the ones I bought won't til next summer.



The sugar snaps are growing in fibre pots and the runner beans in empty loo rolls so they can be planted out in the raised beds without disturbing their roots. Peas especially hate root disturbance. Planting them as seeds directly into the ground seems to invite the pigeons to eat the first shoots so I do it like this instead. It's worked before.



And, I have eaten my first few platefuls of asparagus.....Everything I have read about how this vegetable is just amazing when grown and eaten really, really fresh is correct. Even the best supermarket can't compete. I sometimes can get it from a wayside stall on my way to the New Forest in the season, but even that is not as good as the stuff that came out of our raised bed. You could eat it raw it was so crisp, crunchy and sweet. As it was I chucked it into a pan of boiling water for less than a minute, popped it on a plate and dropped a spoonful of hollandaise sauce I made on top. With some nice bread - divine. It has taken enormous restraint NOT to cut anymore. To last for twenty years, which a nurtured asparagus bed can do, it is essential not to take too much too soon (ie in this the third year)The advice is to take enough to bring on the crowns, but not enough to deplete their strength.

The poppies we inherited in front of our house are in first bloom again. Last year the wind destroyed them before I took a picture. I got in early this time round. One of the few plants we could keep when we moved in. Almost everything was knotted with ground elder and bindweed and had to be dug out and got rid of. They are quite dazzling growing there.



We also had our first swim in the sea. Yup. No kidding. Iain and I swam as did the dogs on Monday 25th of April....

Someone had spent a pleasant sunny morning building this:



To which I added stones for us, Nellie, Archie and for Henry and Pop too. They loved it down here and it was our first swim without both of them.

Here we are, proving that we did swim. Really.





We took a different route down than I generally take mostly coming across from Kingston, down over Houns-Tout, to Chapman's Pool. Iain and I (and Mutley and Rosie too) helped to build these steps with Dorset Countryside Volunteers years ago. We met through this group on a different task one cold January day when I was full time teaching and desperate to meet people who had nothing to do with teaching AND to be outdoors all weekend in all weathers! Looking for a future husband was not part of my plan......



Back to the swim:

Yes our shins went numb initially but once we got through that it actually felt 'warm' and was comfortable enough to go in and swim several times and then the sun was warm enough to sit in to dry off. Topped off with a walk back to Kingston and a drink in The Scott Arms pub garden with the dogs, the glorious views over to Corfe Castle....



.....and several packets of crisps each. Simple pleasures.


It was Nellie's first grade 7 show at Easter, having had her last g6 one in September and then missing Honiton as she was in season and of course not competing.

We did our first UKA show of the year (not sure of any more looking at the season booked so far). Before I go on to write about Nellie I would like to mention that Archie had his little moment winning a Senior Midi steeplechase! He enjoyed it and had a good game with orange gorilla afterwards. He did one steeplechase run on all but one day. I think he came 3rd in another one!

Nellie and I started the show just starting in Senior (she'd won out of Novice finally last June - the day Henry died - but I had deliberately held back. I think in the end she had 78 points in Novice, you need 36!) and ended the show in Champ. She got a LOT of firsts across Games, Jumping and Agility on the Friday and Saturday, chocked up the 48 points, and bumped us out of Senior and on into Masters and Champ for the Sunday. Not going to say a great deal about the Masters (not the best agility experience I've had) but Champ was OK. Won an Agility, nearly won a Gamblers, and ran her very badly in a rather excruciating Jumping. C'est la vie.

It was also a first for me to go walking off site from the Newbury showground. Armed with my OS map, rucsac and walking boots, the dogs and I headed off to explore the bye-ways (on our own on the Friday and with Mandy and her three the other two days) and were pleasantly surprised by how much lovely countryside there was to have a two hour walk (or more) in the evening, and once we had passed the A34 we couldn't hear it either. The 'exercise' ( I use this term loosely) areas at Newbury are guaranteed to make me feel like a hamster stuck in a wheel after just one day, and my dogs are not used to being cooped up like that either, so I went prepared knowing we'd be marooned for four.. I'm glad I did as the areas we were allowed on were even more restricted than usual there.

It was Nellie's first KC Champ show at Vyne. I got E'd in Henry's first Champ (Tina's toy episode), got E'd in Pop's first Champ (underestimated how long it would take to get to her number, arrived to be told I had to get on the line and couldn't recall what the hell I was supposed to be doing...) and erm, with Nellie, although we did OK in the Jumping, got E'd in the Agility. My fault (when isn't it?) for not being another step further forward past an A frame and using 'OK Nell' when I should have just called 'Nell' One of those situations when just her name would have been better. Don't do it very often as she has to wait for the 'OK' to release but just occasionally there isn't time for two words - and there wasn't here......Hum. Still our timing was better this weekend than last and I hope that continues to be the case. She did some lovely work in both courses and, I think anyway, looked lovely moving, turning tight to wings and much more drivey and grown up. There is still more under the bonnet though I am sure. I need to use all the gears and push my foot to the floor more often now. I am very glad I haven't rushed or pressured her. There might be flaws in my training of her, and in my handling definitely, but there are no flaws in her.

At the risk of coming over all 'here's a pithy truism' I'm nevertheless struck by the similarities between training a dog to do agility (or any other discipline really) and developing a viable asparagus bed!!! Yes really....Both require ideal nurturing conditions and 'good preparation of the soil', both require patience and both require restraint and you will never truly know if you have got it right, or not, until maturity is reached:

'the mind and the spirit become ripe in their own fashion and at their own pace. Beautiful music plays, but not everyone with ears can hear it'
(Danielle Trussoni)