I took the key and walked out of the garden this morning, down to the pond and bamboo fence. When I helped plant the bamboos three years ago they were shorter than me. Now, coloured like Humpty Dumpty’s pyjama legs, the yellow and green plants arch twenty feet tall with the girth of a wart hog, and are starting to form a beautiful fence.
It was the pond that caused the trouble though. With so much rain the water was high and the ground around laced with gurgling streams and pools, pouring through last season’s maize and cassava plants. To me it looked like a pond covered in weed but to AD it was obviously something else and all that indicated that something was amiss was a small splash and then a brown head was swimming away through the greenery. “Oh that’s nice,” I thought, knowing full well that AD could swim out again. But then in a moment of foolhardy bravado CD leapt too. Whilst AD swam a graceful circle, CD jumped, panicked, tread water, and slowly started sinking until, rather like a crocodile, only his eyes and nose were visible.
The bank where I stood, from where he had leapt, was too steep for him to get out, and with a panic that CD was about to disappear for good, I had to bottom-slide down the mud, drop a wellied leg in the water and grab first AD by the collar then CD by the whiskers. I felt CD’s relief shimmer up my arm when I caught him and he had something firm to gapple with.
Fully on dry land again and with a good smearing of mud in my hair I felt rather non-plussed as I viewed the bubbles frothing from a tear in the shin of my boot: shampoo packed in the boot for the journey over had leaked, and was now combining with pond water to give my foot and leg a washing of sorts. But AD and CD were far from disturbed by their dunking and although careful to avoid the pond, continued to race and play across the swampy ground and streams oblivious to my cursing.
