April 20, 2010. Tuesday.
Situation: Work in the afternoon. I get home about 4:45 and take Mway out for a walk. I bring along a small stick that Mway had left lying beside the kitchen table, probably from her morning walk with Moi.
State of the Path: Passing by the garden pond, I again note the new ground plant coming up all over the place and wonder if Moi had a chance to look at it so she can tell me what it is. Before the pig pen, I hear a squeal, not sure if it’s a bird or something else, but immediately I see Mway sticking her snout in a PVC pipe lying in the weeds, so I figure it must have been a mouse that lives in the pipe. I hear birds all along the walk, but I realize with the leaves coming out on the trees it’s harder and harder to see them. Down by the creek, I realize that there aren’t as many trout lilies out now as there were before and that they must have passed their peak; the cheeses, though, are more prevalent. I see some more of the same ground plant that’s growing by the garden pond, and it suddenly dawns on me what this is: these are the first shoots of jewelweed, or touch-me-nots (which will grow higher all summer and not flower till late in the season). I note that someone has stuck a stick in the ground near the pines in bug land; I don’t know if Moi stuck it there to indicate that she planted something, or if she or the Boy stuck it there because it is simply a fine looking stick: a long crooked stick with its top portion gnarled in such a way that it looks like someone carved a design in it.
State of the Creek: There’s still some water in the drainage swale from bug land, but it is just standing and not trickling any more into the creek. The water in the creek is very low, and in the pools it looks like it’s not moving; you can only see the water flowing slightly when it’s over the rocks.
The Fetch: Mway definitely prefers the smaller stick, as again she fetches it more times than I bother to count. But I have to admit to myself that I miss the bigger stick, the feel of it as I toss it, the transfer of force from my arm to the stick itself. Because I can’t impart as much energy into the smaller stick, I only throw it within the grassy clearing itself, and on the second or third toss, after Mway brings it back and drops it at my feet, it even breaks in half. After that it feels like I’m throwing a toothpick. And, indeed, on one toss, the stick, instead of being propelled forward, flies twirling high in the air, landing well short of where Mway expects it to land and has already run to, so that she starts sniffing the ground wondering where it is, and I have to finally walk up to the stick and point it out to her. But Mway doesn’t care how small the stick is; as long as it’s some sort of object that she can run after, pick up, and bring back to me, she goes after it with passion and determination – or at least what seems like passion and determination to me.
5 comments:
So that’s it? – you’ve only completed half of your work? I’m disappointed. But still, what you have done is -- pretty impressive.
For a dog? Isn’t that what you mean? Well, I felt a lot of pressure to post something, and I don’t know how much longer it would have taken to finish Part ? But Part ! was the rough part – I’d really like to go on with Part ?, but I think a different approach might be most appropriate. Interview me. M.
In re-reading this blog since my last post on December 24, 2011, I see that in this post I call the area where spring and rain water courses into the creek a “swale,” whereas several times before I call it a “ditch.” Since, unlike the feed channel for the failed skating pond, this area, although the ground is furrowed a little, is definitely not a ditch, certainly not a deep ditch, I remember thinking at the time that after four months I finally hit upon le mot juste for this spot. But in looking up the word “swale” just now, I realize that this is even a worse word choice. My OED (the big gun, I guess you could call it, of my various dictionaries) defines “swale” as “a hollow, low place; esp. U.S., a moist or marshy depression in a tract of land, esp. in the midst of rolling prairie.” This definition could perhaps best be applied to the whole of bug land. So what do I call that area where the waters from bug land, in flowing toward the creek, cut a channel, though one not very deep, to the creek? Could I call it a ditch after all? Does a ditch have to be deep? In the various definitions in my various dictionaries, a ditch is described as being long and narrow, but nowhere do I see depth being necessarily attributed to it. Could I call it a bunch of little ditches? Anyway, whatever this eroding drainage channel should be called – maybe I should have just called it an eroding drainage channel (but then, for the sake of making a distinction, I should have called the feed channel to the failed skating pond a ditch) – I want to make it clear that the furrow (or furrows) of ground here are not very deep, and that the boards that lie across them are there not to afford a bridge over deep trenches but simply to keep my boots from being engulfed in water, which they succeed in doing much of the time.
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