May 25, 2010. Tuesday.
Situation: Surprisingly I have no work today. Moi, who’s been working all day and won’t be back until this evening, tells me thunderstorms might pass through later today, so I decide to take Mway out about 12:30. My walking workshirt, when I put it on, smells from my sweating in it yesterday while I mowed the lawn, which I managed to finish without the lawnmower breaking down. I bring along an Audubon and a stick from a willow branch that had fallen off the tree and which I mowed over yesterday.
State of the Path: The honeysuckles and Russian olives have now all shed their flowers, and they’ve receded into green anonymity, while the multiflora bushes, now all in full bloom, and the blackberries, all come to the foreground with their white flowers. I can now see clearly where all the multiflora shrubs are. There’s a big one growing up a tree in the back hedgerow; there’s a fairly good-sized one along the side path, out of which I scare a robin on nearly every walk I take. A number grow on the ridge around bug land: one grows up nearly halfway up the big locust at the center of the path along the creek, and another one just down from it, the one I mentioned yesterday that burgeons out toward the creek, grows part way up an oak. There’s one on the other side of the feed channel, growing opposite the honeysuckle I cut back a few days ago, the latter which I no longer have to grab hold of to cross the channel because the water in the channel has dried up. I notice phlox growing near the skunk cabbages, and there’s ever more phlox along the crest of the skating pond. I don’t bother to try to identify the small white flowers among the goose grass, because I’m sure Audubon has omitted that plant from its book, but I do stop at the yellow flowers along the ridge of bug land, and even sit down on the grass, sweat beading up on my forehead because I’m right in the sun, while I leaf through the book. I don’t really find this either in Aubudon, but looking at the small five-petaled flower, and the compound tooth-edged leaves of five, my best guess is that it’s some species of cinquefoil, and I’m going to leave it at that.
State of the Creek: Even before I reach the creek, I can hear Mway splashing around in the water and choking from slurping some of it up too fast or maybe from swallowing a locust flower.
The Fetch: When I get to the clearing I have to call Mway, and I soon see her coming up from somewhere behind the sumacs, wading through the grass and goldenrod. I toss the willow stick toward the end of the clearing (incidentally, where I now know there’s a honeysuckle shrub, a multiflora bush, and a bushy vine of poison ivy growing up the electric pole). Mway runs to it, but then she sits down and starts to chew at the fresh stick, probably to get her smell on it. But I’m worried she might chew it to bits, so I call her, and she comes running back with it. She fetches it more times than I care to count, and toward the end of her bout of fetches, the bark on the stick starts to shred in ribbons and her teeth marks become prominent on it.
2 comments:
Moi tells me that your leg seems much better this morning. I’ll wait to hear from you, and then we’ll resume the interview.
My leg is much better, yes, thank you. And thank you also for feeding me these past couple days even though I was unable to carry out my work of making the rounds of your property and fetching the sticks thereof. I am ever grateful for your charity, and henceforth ever so more devoted to serving you in the manner that befits my humble species. The pain in my leg was nothing compared to the pain I felt in avoiding my duties, though I must beg your indulgence and plea for your understanding that I simply had no choice but to rest the incapacitated limb for a couple days to allow it to heal. I think I bruised it slipping through the back of the folding chair in front of your computer. I’m a little wary now of hopping up here, but I’ll just have to be more careful how I position myself. M.
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