For now, here's Charlie

Life has been piling up too fast to blog, which is embarrassing, because we do not have a very eventful life. R turned 6, lost her first tooth, and started first grade all in the last week of August. Lots of pictures to come about all that. The garden is finally coming into its own after this unusually cool summer. Just in time for the first frost that will take all the green tomatoes.

For now, here is Quiet Charlie. He's growing. He is three months old, and as of his second vet trip last week, 13 pounds. More than doubled from his first vet trip at eight weeks. His legs are growing the fastest. He has that classic slightly cantilevered, gangly-puppy posture.

Oh those ears! He concentrates so hard with them that they come together in a precise little "V." His nose is elongating. D used to call my border collie Gracie "pointy-nosed and beady-eyed," and I love to see Charlie growing into that.

His pink puppy nose is slowly turning black. He has a love-hate relationship with the hose. We water the gardens twice a day in late summer, so he usually has a wet head like this.

Some dogs have faces that are so almost-human that we respond to that, which is probably not fair to the dog. Charlie has that--I think a lot of border collies do. It's why we got a border collie puppy, even though we know how much extra work they are. My border collie Gracie died when she was almost 15, and R was two. The expression in Gracie's dark brown eyes was so complicated and fiercely intelligent that it never stopped startling me.

But a dog's intelligence is so different from ours, and now with Charlie, I'm trying harder to understand it. He needs focused and consistent and energetic training, and we're doing great in some areas and not as well in others. He is a barker and a biter and a digger. But he is doing great walking on the leash, which is the product of many, many frustrating training sessions with a pocket full of treats and a no-tolerance policy for pulling.

Once in awhile you can convince him to sit like this , and just relax for some petting. And how thoughtful -- look at the modest paw. The second day we had him, R said "Why does Charlie have a little radish hanging from his tummy?"

The tomatoes that are in are spectacular. I can't describe how they taste. It's an event when you find a ripe one on the vine and bring it inside and slice into it, still warm from the sun. This is the summer that I learned to taste a peach and a tomato.