A MONTH of sun and a day of rain have made the climbers take liberties. The grape on the Vermeer-like south wall has taken a leap to the Garrya, and made a curtain of leaves and fruit. Writing an introduction to William Golding's novel Close Quarters, I am shot at by balsam seed. Somebody mows the baked lawns. Roof-high roses fall.

So Seamus Heaney has died. A farmer's son. He wrote like a man who could thatch a stack. And early September would have suited him. Famous Seamus, they called him. They said that he liked John Clare. Field poets touch hands in September, I like to think. The ripening world will be missing him.

September should be busy, but, like all the other months, there is little doing. Birds make music patterns on my telephone wires, and the Proms crash away on the box. All that sound, and not even the white cat giving ear. But that is how it is when the sun shines. I pick a Victoria plum in passing. My little tomatoes hang 20 to the bunch. In the Book of Common Prayer, after the Thanksgiving for fair Weather, there is one for Plenty.

Plenty is manifest in my garden at this moment. How shall I eat it all? Instead of building bigger barns, as in the parable, I must buy a bigger freezer. Or, better still, give some Victorias to the postman. The air is intoxicating - motionless scent. Bees and cabbage whites cling to stamens. Although, here and there, a faint thinning-out points to later days.

What shall I say on Trinity 15? On the Welsh border, I philosophised on the potter's art. So perhaps this, once more. In Chronicles - St Jerome gave this Old Testament book its name - potters came first. You ate from clay, and your dust rested in clay. I imagine that those poor men having a last supper with their Lord drank passover wine from a pottery cup, and not from a jewelled grail.

The miracle now is that pottery lasts. Fragile though it is, and eminently breakable though it is, it can remain whole for thousands of years. The woman at the well would have filled up a tall pot and departed with it on her head.

Humanity becomes mere pottery in Edward FitzGerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. FitzGerald says that although the pot has been thrown by the divine creator, given the choice, "Would we not shatter it to bits and then mould it closer to the heart's desire?" Some do, of course, although the plastic surgeon is no potter.

Singing opposite me in church is our famed potter, Brenda Green. It is not all hands to the potter's wheel, only skilled hands such as hers. The shining wet clay rises as it spins, delicate as the flesh that contains it, as does bread. And, like bread, it must bake. Bread and clay join for that first "Do this in remembrance of me." And, originally, for every meal.

They said that Magdalen Herbert - George's mother - often laid a place for Christ at supper. At the altar, I hold up the thin silver cup that has been sipped in our church since before Herbert. The soft lips, the worn hands, the sacred moment, the bowed heads, the wandering hymn.

Sweet sacrament divine,
Hid in thine earthly home. . .