That Was the Name Thereof

May 22, 2010.  Saturday.

Situation:  Moi and I work in separate places tonight.  I take Mway out about 3:00.  Moi decides to come along.  “Why aren’t your barking, Mway?” she asks.  And I say it’s because she knows I don’t like her to bark.

State of the Path:   We look at the small apples coming out on our apple trees; I point out what I think is the white mulberry tree to Moi, and she points out that it looks like they’re starting to get mulberries; and then we set down the side path along the old orchard, where I have my first question for Moi.  “What is this stuff coming up?” I ask her.  “That’s goose grass, or bedstraw.  Feel how sticky it is,” she says, reaching down to touch it.  “Does it get a flower?” I ask.  “No, I don’t think so,” she says.  Later we see more goose grass down by the creek – it is much higher, and it is indeed getting tiny little flowers (but I don’t find any photo or reference to goose grass in the Audubon, and the northern snow bedstraw pictured in there looks like nothing we’re looking at).   We walk by the black raspberries – and I call them that because Moi agrees with me that that is what they are, and we both recall one other thing that distinguishes the black raspberry from the blackberry:  the purplish cane (as compared to the reddish cane of the blackberry).  I sweep aside some may apple leaves to find the new yellow apples that Moi told me yesterday to look for.  “You got to be more gentle with the way you touch them,” she says.  Moi starts picking some sweetgrass.  “Is that Virginia creeper growing in there?”  I ask, pointing inside the orchard.  “I’d say,” she says, “And jungle size.”  We go by some white flowers that Moi first thinks is on a multiflora bush – but I’m able to point out to her that they are on a blackberry and that the multiflora flowers are very similar.  “What kind of grass is this?” I ask.  “That’s timothy,” Moi says.  “What kind of bush is that?” I ask, pointing to the shrub I was trying to trample to death earlier in the year.  “I’m not sure,” Moi says. “I don’t think it’s a red willow.”  “And see these,” she says, past the wigwams down in bug land, “this is field bracken.”  “Aren’t those ferns?” I ask.  “No. Field bracken.  Look it up in the book.”  “And these bushes here, are they elderberry bushes?”  I ask.  Moi isn’t sure what they are, but she looks at the as yet green buds coming out, and agrees with me that they are worth keeping track of.  Down by the creek, I point out the little white flowers that I noticed the other day, but Moi doesn’t know what they are either – I pick a specimen to take back with me, but still I’m unable to find anything that looks like it in the Audubon.  Later along the ridge around bug land, I notice another new flower, a yellow one – and stuff a specimen of this also in my pocket – also unable to find anything like it in Audubon.  On the other side of the ridge, Moi feels a small shrub.  “This might be an elderberry,” she says, “No.  Maybe not.”  “Sometime before the weeds get too high,” she continues, “we should walk up in the field there and look at the sassafras tree.”  “Oh,” I say, “Is that where it is, up there somewhere?”

State of the Creek:  A lot of locust flowers lying on top of the still pools of water.  At the feed channel, Moi picks some of the sweetflag for me to smell.  The feed channel, for the first time this year, is dry, and we both walk across it onto the crest of the skating pond, Moi stepping in the mud.  We walk in opposite directions along the crest of the skating pond.  “Those phlox are pretty,” Moi says.

The Fetch:  Bring along the “pro-quality” stick today.  I wait for Moi to get past me, before I toss it.  About five fetches.  On the way back to the house, we notice plums coming out on the plum trees by the garden pond.  “They came out like that last year but then disappeared,” I remark.  “Yeah,” Moi recalls also, “I don’t know what happened.  It might have been when I was taking care of Jazz last summer, and just wasn’t around when they were ready to pick.”