May 5, 2010. Wednesday.
Situation: Yesterday I did manage to mow the whole lawn, a task that took about two and a half hours. The only trouble I had was after emptying the hamper or refilling with gas, when I had to pull the cord about ten times to get the engine restarted and one time the cord became jammed and, by rotating the blade, I managed somehow to unjam it. While I was mowing, I noticed for the first time that the leaves on the black walnuts have come out, so now all the leaves on the trees are out, the last ones being the oaks, the ashes, and the black walnuts. I work tonight, and take Mway out for her walk about 2:15.
State of the Path: I bring along the hedge clippers with the intention of trimming back some of the honeysuckles and other shrubs sticking into the path. At the outbuilding, Mway sniffs at the door, and I see a gray cat lying in the second story window, a stray cat, or the progeny of a stray that has been living on our property for some time. My clipping begins at the outbuilding where I cut off a few stems of muliflora and trim back some of the branches of a tree (a boxelder?) that has started growing up across from it. I then tackle each honeysuckle as I come to it, paying particular attention to the honeysuckle near the log jam, which crowds the path almost to the creek bank. I try to trim it back as far as I can, to give as much width to the path as possible, for it is here I believe that Moi claims the ground is becoming undermined – she has taken a photo to show me how there is about a two-feet cavity carved out under the top six inches of ground. I also trim a lot up at the old orchard near the monkey vine, underneath the ashes, and across from the feed channel. Here, though, some of the branches are too thick for the clippers, and I will have to come back to them with a limb trimmer. Just before the drainage swale from bug land, I see a shrub in front of the sandbar, which has just gotten its paired buds and whose leaves are ovate with long tips, and I think to myself, “this must be an Arum honeysuckle, a rarity among all these Morrow’s.” In the upper side path, near the hedgerow, I also spot some new white daisy-like flowers, with so many petals you can’t count them – Moi tells me these are fleabane, although I can’t tell from Audubon whether these are daisy or common fleabane.
State of the Creek: The water in the pool at the log jam is nice and brown. But even with the honeysuckle trimmed back a little, the path edges right up to the creek bank. If the ground doesn’t cave in, it would be easy to step off the ledge – I know Moi doesn’t like taking the path here. As I’m walking along looking up at the leaves on the oaks coming out, and then at the two giant ashes, I see hovering overhead three, what I believe are, turkey vultures. Because I’m carrying hedge clippers, I didn’t bring along a stick, so after I make the rounds on the breast of the skating pond, I go back to the creek past the bug land swale to find a stick among the dead sticks there beneath the honeysuckles to bring to the clearing with me.
The Fetch: The stick is about as long, but not as heavy, as my “pro-quality” stick, which I left behind today. Mway likes it, and fetches it close to ten times. The only drawback is that the bark on it is rather rotted, so toward the end of her run of fetches, Mway is coughing and hacking a little on the bits of bark she has gnawed off.
3 comments:
Let’s go back a minute to the end of Part !, where you leave us with the canine having acquired a basic vocabulary of words from their association with pictures. These words are mainly nouns?
Yes, nouns of concrete things. These are the words that can best be illustrated. The picture functions in the way that a spoken word does for a human learning to read. It is more in the manner of the way a picture functions when a human child is learning to speak. There are children’s books devoted to this pedagogical task, and a dog can learn the words for things ranging from “laundry basket” to “Tyrannosaurus rex,” not to mention numerals, “1, 2, 3…” and the corresponding words to them. A dog can also pick up a lot of words from pictures in encyclopedias and dictionaries, words such as “Edward R. Murrow” and “uncial.” And in such books it doesn’t matter where you begin. Eventually I even came across a book, one of yours, titled “What’s What,” a visual glossary of everyday objects, and from that I learned the word for everything from a “coxa” on an insect to the “pitch trim controls” of a 747 cockpit. Occasionally I have come across attempts to illustrate verbs, a picture of an ear, for example, with squiggly lines drawn next to it, to represent “hear,” a picture of a basketball with squiggly lines underneath it to represent “bounce.” These are helpful – eventually I get the meaning. But they are perilous. M.
Following is an abstract of a recurring event of much of 2010, which had to transpire by the 5th of each month. I do not mention the event in my journal, but I include this abstract, as a framing device, because the event has some sort of relation to the journal’s central action.
Court of the District Magistrate
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Joplin B. Gregor
Charge: Disorderly Conduct
Amount of Fine: $795.00 Previous Balance: $397.50
Payment received: $66.25 Current Balance: $331.25
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