Happy Birthday Ben!

Ben aged 10 weeks

Ben aged (not quite) two years

Today, as well as St George's Day, a certain young newfie has reached his second birthday! He has been advised that his puppyhood is now officially behind him and he must now behave like a mature and sensible dog. I realised he hadn't been listening when I found myself chasing my slipper (firmly grasped in his slobbery jaws) round and round the garden this morning.

The primrose is the county flower for Devon - there are loads this year!

Whilst running around the garden in pursuit of my slipper I noticed several things. Firstly, that my exposed right sock was becoming increasingly soggy. Secondly, how beautiful the garden is looking at present (weeds and all!) and thirdly, what a wonderful den Ben has made for himself next to the compost bins!

We chased past the old bird bath (three times!)

At the top of the garden by the overgrown fig tree where we sling the hammock in the summer, the hedges are very wide, probably approaching eight foot - and very dense. I noticed a tunnel had appeared at the base and peering inside realised that a beautiful snug hollow had been carefully created by the pressure of a newfie body pressing against the tangle of branches. I realised that it was the handiwork of one particular newfie as there were tufts of black fur on a couple of the twigs and a rather neglected looking stuffed bear with only one eye was lying on the floor. Also, Ben is rather inquisitive and so had carefully crafted a window in one side of the den to enable observation of Nick and Julie's activities in their vegetable garden next door!

Ben's Den

He is also very creative in teasing Amy - a favourite trick being to delay eating a treat until she's consumed her own, then chewing it very slowly in front of her. This is occasionally varied by leaving the delicious item just out of her reach, then pouncing and snatching it away when she makes a move towards it. But she loves him just the same!!

Happy Birthday Ben!

Back on the beach!

The weather here in Devon has been cold and gloomy with icy winds for most of the holidays, so we haven't been to the beach very much lately. Of course the newfies adore this weather, and often beg to be allowed outside to bask on the cold cold slates and turn their muzzles to the icy blast! But today dawned bright and sunny, the tide was right so ... the beach it was! All is revealed in our video below...

The ancient sport of newfie-wrestling

DevonBear Promotions are proud to present an evening of newfie-wrestling from the garden at Coombe Leigh. Here the two participants are evenly matched, and although the fight was energetic neither party sustained injury during the making of this video. Although the outcome was unclear I am inclined to nominate Ben as winner, due to the copious amounts of dog hair, slobber and mud he succeeded in plastering over Rory during their match. (Well, no one said newfie-wrestling was completely without risk!)

Amy's accident - and a new idea!

Last weekend Amy was a competition at the village fete - "Guess the weight of the dog". Here she is wearing her special harness complete with bunting! She of course had a great time as the centre of attention, and I went along to act as her minder. I spent a couple of hours accepting people's twenty-pences and recording their estimates of her rather too substantial weight. This was great fun, especially as helpers received free cups of tea all afternoon!

You can see in the photo above that she stands with her bum very rounded and her back legs tucked under her at an angle. She also walks in a crooked fashion due to a spinal injury sustained in her earlier life when she used to do water rescue work. She has a huge jagged scar running all the way down her back and can't raise her tail - it's a very funny shape having been broken in several places. She does the cutest little wag of just the tip when she's really happy, and she isn't in any pain now (except on damp mornings) as she is on medication from the vet. She still loves swimming which is the best therapy of all for her.

Is this a happy dog? I think so!

Anyway, all that time spent contemplating the roundness of Amy's backside started me thinking ... and I've come up with THE AMIE BAG!!!

Note how perfectly the shape of the bag corresponds to the shape of the sleeping Amy. Do you think this is a legitimate design technique? Should I offer myself as a special speaker on design courses? Probably not ... but I still think the Amie Bag looks really good. Vintage linen too, so recycled - just like Amy! It will have its debut on the DevonBears stall at the Saltram Craft Fair next month, so I hope the customers there like it too!!

Will the paparazzi come calling?

I haven't had time to blog for ages, and was going to write about our weekend at Saltram, and the trip to the beach to make it up to the dogs for abandoning them in kennels. (Not that they care, Ben almost fell over his big wubbly paws he was so eager to get into the play area, and even Amy barely stopped for a goodbye kiss before hurrying inside!)

But events have overtaken me. I find that I am now the custodian of two media stars. The fantastic, fund-raising Amy and Ben!! This has come about because of a conversation I had with Ray when he was bringing us home in his taxi from a boozy night out in Dartmouth. Ray is our village correspondent for the local paper and is always on the lookout for a good story. I was telling him about Ben's sponsored walk and about how Amy was going to BE a competition at the Parish Fete. And look what happened...!! (Must have been a very slow week for news in the Kingsbridge area)

Amy not on a diet! Huh! That's what SHE thinks. Her last weigh-in at the vet's was very embarrassing, particularly as Ben was congratulated on his trim, lean figure. Still, I guess it's all in a good cause, and it's her birthday on Friday, so perhaps the diet can start next week.

Off to pamper my two stars.....

Great excitement at Coombe Leigh

We are all very excited here at Coombe Leigh. We are going to have a photoshoot here at the house with a proper professional photographer. (Not just me with my little digital camera!). Jack is coming to take some lifestyle shots for DevonBears publicity so we are all running around trying to make everywhere look beautiful.

Of course Amy feels she is already beautiful and when the words "camera" and "photograph" were mentioned she immediately started posing madly. She was made worse by the coincidental visit of Kelly, our lovely grooming lady, who came to give her and Ben their regular beauty session. Here's Kelly hard at work ..

Amy feels that she should be the centre of attention, so keeps edging closer and closer to Kelly ..

Meanwhile Ben is surreptiously chewing through the lead Kelly has used to attach him to the railings!

Afterwards they were quite worn out. I didn't have the heart to tell them that we weren't actually planning to include them in the photographs. I expect Amy at least will manage to push her way into one or two of the pictures ... and where she leads Ben usually follows!

As you can see, the grass has been cut ready for the shoot, and look at that lovely edging - shame it's not straight!! Never mind, perhaps wonky will become the new trendy after our uber-cool photographs demonstrate this new look?! (That's the studio/workroom on the left in this picture and the handrail leads to the steps to the courtyard. Our house is built into the side of a hill, so the garden is actually above the house).

While all this activity was taking place, I was in the gazebo painting - Christmas cards!! Surreal or what? But my summer's going to be so busy I thought it was best to start early rather than risk running out of time as they'll need to be at the printers by the end of August.

Here's the first (still rather rough) version of card one for the set of dog cards. More will follow..

An afternoon in the garden

This last week has been so warm and sunny that we've spent almost all our time outside. This afternoon I took my paints into the gazebo and completed the picture above which I think will make a great postcard, and possibly a patch for a canvas bag. I'm off to a number of craft fairs over the summer months, so I need some images that will appeal to visitors to the area, and hopefully this will be popular.

Of course Ben has been very bored by all the painting and gardening - here he has collapsed in a stupor of boredom. But I told him the beach wouldn't be nearly so much fun if he spent all his time there. I don't think he believed me though. So he decided if he couldn't be digging in sand, then he'd dig up the borders instead. Check out the muddy nose below!!

I was given a couple of tomato plants by Nick from next door, and I've planted them in an old wooden apple crate. It's hard to believe that one day they'll reach nearly to the top of the canes and that I'll be picking my own salads before long. I'm also planning to put in some aubergine and pepper plants, it'll be very Mediterranean in my courtyard!

The lanes here are at their best now I think. They're smothered with bluebells and pink campion, with cow parsley frothing in wild abandon. Some of the wider and sunnier verges are even studded with wild orchids. I have been told that they're a very common kind, but then that doesn't make them any less attractive. I often think that the summer visitors miss our countryside at its best, since by late July and August the wild flowers are mostly over and everywhere is beginning to look tired and dusty. At this time of year I often think of the poem "Lanes in Summer" by Malcolm Hemphrey which I learned as a child...

I love the little winding lanes,

In the sweet days when summer reigns;

The eglantine and hawkweed's plume;

The dog-rose and the bramble bloom,

Like stars from heaven gone astray;

The fragrant scent of new-mown hay;

The poppies in the green-aisled wheat;

The bees that find the clover sweet;

The last song of the wren and thrush

Breaking through the drowsy hush -

If kindly peace be anywhere

'Tis surely there, 'tis surely there.

The boy did it!!

Last weekend Ben did something very useful for once. He would probably argue that he is extremely useful around the home - digging holes in the garden for me to put in new plants, making skid marks on the lawn to break up that oh-so boring expanse of green, patiently transporting sand home from the beach in his coat so that our hall resembles the beach - after all that's his favourite place - so let's have it at home too he thinks. Now, he may regard these activities as useful and constructive but in general I disagree.

However ... he has finally done something really good. He participated in the Start Circle of Friends (SCOF) sponsored dog walk to raise money for patient transport services. We are very rural here and many elderly people live a long way from medical services with no transport to get them there. The SCOF volunteers transport these folk to and from their appointments. They give of their time for free, but of course petrol is increasingly expensive and has to be paid for - hence the sponsored walk.

We collected loads of sponsorship money with the slogan "Sponsor or be slobbered!" This worked extremely well and Ben's form was soon overflowing with names and promises of support. Now all he had to do was complete the walk. There was a choice of 2 or 5 miles. Naturally we went for the 2 mile walk.

This is not because we are lazy, but because even though Ben's very big, he is still a baby really at only 12 months old. It's only recently that I've been able to do much walking with him at all as you have to be really careful of Newfie puppies' joints while they're growing so fast. It was a hot day too - so 2 miles it was. AND HE DID IT!! Here is his certificate ...

He was sooo tired at the end, bless him. Cream teas, bowls of water and a variety of dog biscuits were provided for the walkers back at the village hall. Then when we arrived home - he flopped on the cool slates of the rear courtyard. Amy fussed around him for a while (she of course had remained at home on guard - no, not the house - the beautiful juicy bone I gave her to make up for staying behind) then, confident he was OK really, went back to her bone.




And Ben slept for at least 2 hours. Then he was ready for tea!

A visit to Dartmouth

Our friends Joe and Jane own the Dartmouth Canvas Factory. We met last year when I was looking for someone to make panniers for Ben. I had often passed the Canvas Factory and thought that it looked the kind of place that might be able to help. So, after a glass of wine to fortify myself I went inside and tentatively enquired whether they might be able to make panniers for a Newfoundland dog. It was fortunate that I am not, as Jane Austen might remark, of a nervous disposition, because at that point a tall man leaped out from behind the counter garbling, "You've got a newfie? You've got a newfie?"

Of course I informed him that indeed that was the case, and in fact I was the proud owner of (or owned by!) two of these black furry bear-like creatures. "Where are they from?" came the next question at the speed of machine gun fire.. "one from the West Midlands and one from north Devon," I answered, backing towards the door a little. "Not Lucy Stevenson?" "Yes" ... and it transpired that Joe (for so he turned out to be) had owned Amy's half-sister, Storm. Of course we were now fated to become friends, for after all, as previous custodian of Amy's half-sister, he was practically family already.

The picture above was painted for them, and is now displayed on a shelf in the shop. But back to my story ... Jane did indeed make panniers for Ben. Panniers Mark One were trialled last month and a few alterations were required - including Ben-proofing the bags to prevent theft of the contents - by either dog!! Then we went back for the final version and Ben posed ....

Like the superstar he wants to be ...

Joe is now suggesting that we fill the panniers with beer and then train Ben to sit in the sea until the beer is chilled. Would this constitute newfie-cruelty do you think? No answers on a postcard please!

One swallow ....

Yesterday I saw the first swallow of spring on our telephone wire. One swallow might not a summer make, but surely now we can hope that summer isn't too far away. I love to watch their aerobatics over and around the house - and last summer in the house - one besotted pair swooped low through the back door then up to the top of the house where they left just as swiftly through an open bedroom window.

I'd rather have swallows indoors than our bats. I'm very pleased that they've decided to call our attic and cellar home, but don't like it when they come into the house proper, it's so difficult to send them outside again. I usually just open the window and close the door of the room they've invaded and hope they find their own way out by morning.

All this rain and then warm weather has brought the garden on - it's so rampantly fertile you can almost see and hear it growing. My runner beans are already 12" tall and the borders have recovered well from the puppy's excavations during the colder months. Trouble is, we now see the rise of the super-slug. Armed with bionic rasping jaws unless checked these creatures munch their way through my wisteria, hollyhocks, beans and anything else they choose to devour. I do try to garden organically, but must admit that I resort to slug pellets at this time of year, though choose the ones that are harmless to other wildlife.

Indoors is just as busy. As well as preparing for craft shows, I have realised that the stronger sunlight is revealing areas that, from the look of them, have not been properly cleaned since last summer! Sand and dog fur are the main problems, together with liberal sprinklings of mud where the dogs shake after coming in from outside. Alas, as fast as I clean, the problem recurs. I'm sure those pesky canines are deliberately trying to recreate some of their favourite outdoor places indoors. Certainly the floor resembled Lannacombe beach this morning. Clearly they enjoyed romping across the sand so much yesterday they decided to bring the beach home with them too. Batson Creek later today I think .... but back to the sewing for now.