“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date” (William Shakespeare)
But this year, the process seems to be beginning a little earlier, and I find myself hoping — not for the first time — that this does not signify an early-onset winter. I’ve been imagining rather a lot of malign portents lately, such as the mysterious departure of the dreaded west Cork midge, usually with us here in the woods well into October.
This ceremonial re-arranging of the dog beds has been happening for several years now, and as far as I can make out, is a sort of canine version of feng shui.
The chief practitioner is our collie/Bernese cross, Jack, a dog of lively intelligence, and iron will when he is on a mission such as this. The first signs that he is once again in the grip of his favourite obsession is that the dog beds — made up of mattress, removable cushions and a blanket thrown on top in a futile attempt to capture the vast amounts of hair — are not where they were the last time I looked.
Jack has carefully moved them to different parts of the house. There seems to be no logic or discernible pattern to this process, at least none that I can make out.
And I have never actually seen him at work.
I reunite the strewn components, which have usually ended up in places where you are certain to trip over them. Then I go about my day. And in no time at all, he’s done it again.
Jack looks at me pityingly as I put everything back where I think it belongs while despairing at my lack of aesthetic appreciation, and probably wondering why I insist on making him all this extra work.
Daisy the St Bernard takes no part in these proceedings. After the morning walk, she generally eschews the dog beds and sprawls out on her favourite rug in front of the couch, snoring heavily like a drunken sailor, her meaty paws twitching occasionally as she remembers the badger trail she discovered recently and dreaming, no doubt, of the day when she has her long-awaited showdown with Brock.
A city girl in her previous existence, it’s hard to imagine just what might happen if that day should ever arrive. Despite Daisy’s massive girth, I suspect she would not come out of such a confrontation well.
But Daisy takes the business of security seriously, and patrols the perimeters of the house morning and night before she is finally satisfied that an invasion by hostiles — or badgers — is not imminent. And when drinking from the river, a lengthy process, which she adores, Daisy always pauses to look about her carefully in both directions for itinerant wildebeest or any other suspect wildlife.
When it comes to the tricky business of the correct placement of objects, how-ever, she prefers to leave that sort of thing to our resident expert.
The dog beds are only the beginning, though.
As the weather continues to cool, and darkness falls ever earlier, Jack turns his attentions to the furniture. Having sorted out the beds to his satisfaction, he begins work on the couch and armchairs, all no-go areas for the dogs, who are generally really good at observing these rules
But it seems that no amount of scolding can stop him from digging out cushions, covers or anything else that’s in his way, nosing them into the correct position, then curling up to sleep.
As winter progresses, the pile of disparate objects — coffee tables, dining room chairs, books — that I place on the furniture to dissuade him, grows alarmingly.
Even then, he will sometimes manage to climb these tottering piles and curl up on top of them to sleep.
Not that I ever catch him there of course. Being a collie, he’s far too clever for that.
But the piles of hair and assorted bits of undergrowth are proof enough that Jack was here.
Yet, as soon as there’s a stretch to the evenings, and spring is more than a distant memory, he suddenly stops.
It’s unlikely that he’s actually a frustrated interior designer, of course, and much more probable that this is some sort of primal response to the potentially deadly effects of winter that hark back to the last ice age, when the mammoth roamed and it was all about survival of the fittest — and the warmest. But sympathetic though I am with his lingering concerns, our house is usually heated to just below tropical temperatures, and Jack’s response is more than a little over the top.
Then, autumn can sometimes have a strange effect on us all.
Poets and writers seem to be particularly affected.
Their response to the drama of the changing season seems to vary between the euphoric and the downright melancholic.
Writer Elizabeth Lawrence sensibly insists:
“Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.”
In her poem, Autumn Perspective, Erica Jong glumly points out:
“We remain the same beneath our suntans, pale, frightened, dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time, dreaming our dreaming selves.
I look forward, and see myself looking back.”
Perhaps one of the most sombre reflections I’ve come across appears in Ranier Maria Rilke’s poem, Autumn Day.
“Whoever has no house now will not have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
And wander the boulevards up and down restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.”
Writers of the Japanese haiku poem have frequently been inspired by the seasons, and often transform melancholy into a thing of mysterious beauty such as in Arima Akita’s haiku.
“Late autumn — a single chair waiting, for someone yet to come.”
Or Suzuki Masajo’s words of wisdom:
“No escaping it, I must step on fallen leaves to take this path.”
But in his poem, Merry Autumn, American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar approaches the oncoming winter far more robustly:
“It’s all a farce — these tales they tell
About the breezes sighing.
And moans astir oe’r field and dell,
Because the year is dying.
Don’t talk to me of solemn days
In autumn’s time of splendour
Because the sun shows fewer rays,
And these grow slant and slender
Why it’s the climax of the year
The highest time of living!
Till naturally it’s bursting cheer
Just melts into Thanksgiving.”
