Lawn Games

Lawn Games
It’s about 8:45 am on an early September morning and the dogs and I are outside, waiting for George to return from his daily walk. Harry and Bess are having their morning rumpus on the front lawn. Bess antagonizes Harry with a stick. She wheels and whirls around in front of him, stops suddenly and plants her rear end in the air, her front legs and head down low, her face pulled back in the snarl that signals she’s playing. Harry chases her, but comes back to me throughout the game, never forgetting his role as protector. Harry tires first, so he simply takes the stick and chews it in into small pieces so that a new trophy will be required before they can continue. He hasn’t realized that Bess keeps our lawn littered with sticks so that she can provoke a game any time she can coax him outside.

Behind me, a pair of bumblebees plays their own game in the begonias. They are too busy to be threatened by me and I am busy enough not be threatened by them. The begonias need to be cut back to a neater size, but I will leave them for the last few weeks before fall takes them completely. The bees have only a little while more to enjoy them.

Harry comes back to check on me and I see the purple stains along his left side that marked yesterday morning’s game of chase. Bess is smaller and not as fast as Harry, but more agile. She evens the odds of staying ahead by leading Harry in and through every obstacle in our yard. Yesterday, that included regular sprints through our beautyberries, which are in full berry now. Bess jumped over the shrubs while Harry, in hot pursuit, barreled right through, dyeing his yellow shoulder and flank neon purple in the process.

And, suddenly, they are off again, chasing back through the woods at the back of our property. The dogs are so engaged that they don’t even hear George call to them as he arrives home. Maybe they are too busy listening to bird songs, insects, lawn mowers and weed eaters in distant yards, and the sound of neighbors leaving for work.

I’ve heard that something should HAPPEN when you write a story so maybe this really isn’t one. But, for me, connection is happening and, as it does, I discover what I need and want to do in the coming hours and days. Not in as dramatic or as comic a way as the political conventions we’ve watched for the last two weeks, but far more productively, I believe. I know what I can do and have priorities for what is truly most important.

The dogs are tired now, lying at my feet, on the concrete floor of the pergola. Harry barely twitches when he sees a hummingbird feeding on the other side of the walk. Bess is already dozing, her side rising and falling slowly with each breath. I see grass cuttings on the sidewalk, left from mowing the grass yesterday, but I don’t want to disturb the dogs by sweeping any more than I want to disturb the bees. They have priorities, too, and somehow, we have to respect each others’.