They're Some Sort of Honeysuckle

April 27, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  Moi and I both work today, Moi having to leave earlier than I do, so it falls upon me again to take Mway for her morning walk, which I’ll probably have to do all week.  We go out about 8:30.  I find my father’s safari helmet.  It is in the basket with the cow skull.  I select a small stick from the bench on the porch: this one’s gnarled with a kind of burl at one end.

State of the Path:  Today my feet get soaked simply by walking through the wet grass.  I brush past and, particularly on the side path near the boxelder trees, stoop under those shrubs that crowd the path and that I still hesitate to call Russian olive or honeysuckle shrubs – the photos in Audubon depict these shrubs as having yellow flowers, and whatever it is I brush past and stoop under has white flowers.  I will have to bring an Audubon with me sometime, but unfortunately I don’t have the time today.  Again it is cool today, and most of the flowers have not opened.  It seems to me that we are past the flowering time of the trout lilies.

State of the Creek:  It rained last night, and the water, though not that high, is flowing strongly.  There’s cow piss foam hanging against the big log at the log jam.  Water is trickling in at the swale from bug land, and just barely creeping around the sandbar.  On the sandbar, shoots of jewelweed have come up, and there’s a single wild mustard plant jutting up in the middle of it.

The Fetch:  With the smaller sticks I’ve been bringing along, I no longer keep count how many fetches Mway makes, since it’s now typically far more than three, and closer to ten.  Again I make my first toss as I’m walking across the clearing, and Mway dashes after the stick and brings it back to me before I can take two more steps toward the end of the clearing.  On a number of tosses, Mway sprints off at angle opposite to that at which I toss the stick, and she has to make a sharp right-angle corrective turn to dash off in the direction where she hears the stick fall.
Addendum:  After I finish work, I come back home to mow the lawn about 5 pm.  The drive belt on my lawnmover comes loose, not untypically, and I have to push the lawnmower without any mechanical aid to mow most of the lawn.  I’m very tired afterwards, but while Moi is in the kitchen cooking supper, I take Mway for a second walk, just a very short one, past the summer house and down to the clearing.  On my way back, I tear off a twig of the shrub I’ve been talking about, and this evening I spend about 2 hours trying to identify it.  In the Audubon, I leaf more carefully through the wildflower book and eventually narrow my specimen down to a type of honeysuckle shrub – the photo of the Tartarian honeysuckle most resembles what I see outside (I hadn’t realized before that there was a special shrub section in the book or I simply missed the picture before).  But the entry also makes mention of the Morrow’s honeysuckle, though there’s not a separate entry or photo for that.  When I go online, I find photos of the Morrow’s, showing the white, five petal flower (that should turn yellow with age), the oblong leaves, followed by commentary on how this is an invasive species that likes disturbed areas – the only problem is that mention is made on at least one site of a hairy underside to the leaf, which does not seem to match with my specimen.  Nevertheless, I’m sure that the shrubs that I have to brush against and stoop under these days are, if not a Morrow’s, certainly some sort of honeysuckle bush – as Moi has been saying all along.