To the Sassafras Trees

May 23, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  Work all day today, and unfortunately it’s still light out when I get home, so I take Mway out, about 6:30.  Moi decides to come along again.

State of the Path:  She takes me first out to the garden to show me what she planted today: some more green peppers and tomatoes, some herbs, some endive, and I guess Swiss chard.  I stop at the white mulberry tree.  “We should take a look at this,” I say.  “There’s what people have told me is a mulberry tree over here,” Moi says, and I follow her into the walled garden to look at a tree, growing on the opposite side of the falling-down barn wall, that has maybe what you call catkins growing on it, and for all I know may indeed be a mulberry tree.  Past the pig pen, Moi starts going down the side path, knowing that this is the route I usually take.  “No,” I tell her, “we don’t have to go that way tonight.”  It seems to me, as we head straight on the main path down past the wigwams, that everything has grown about six inches more since yesterday.  “What did you say this was again yesterday,” I ask Moi, pointing at a grass-like plant growing in the middle of the path down at the seeps in bug land.  “Sedge,” she says, “look it up in your wetlands book.”  Down by the creek, we look again at the white flowers I haven’t been able to identify, and seeing it growing among leaves that look like goose grass, I remark that maybe they’re the flowers on the goose grass; but Moi parts the plants and reveals that the goose grass is a separate plant from whatever the white flowers are.  As we walk past the log jam, I’m glad that I cut down the honeysuckle bush that once blocked the path because I feel like if I hadn’t I might fall over the bank of the creek today.  I notice that the plastic barrel that the Boy had pulled out of the creek long ago is almost engulfed in jewelweed.  I point out to Moi how I noticed the other day that there are two oaks growing beside and engulfing the lower branches of a big locust tree, and since I’m already looking up overhead, when we get to the center of the path along the creek, I realize to my surprise that the big trees there, engulfed in honeysuckle bushes and a mutliflora shrub, which all this time I’ve been calling ash trees, are actually big locust trees.  When we get to where the path narrows, Moi forces me to give her my stick so she can stick it under the bank to show me how the ground is being undermined.  “Just don’t cause anything to give way,” I tell her.  Up beyond the break in the ridge, Moi says, “We should go look at that sassafras tree while the weeds are still not that high,” so we traipse through a field of goldenrod to look at a tree which even I can identify as, indeed, a sassafras tree (two of them actually – and perhaps the only sassafras trees growing on our land).  Back on the path, we pass the strawberry patch.  “I’ve never been happy with the strawberries here,” she says, “These might be what they call Indian strawberries, or false strawberries, rather than real wild strawberries.”  Then she points to a plant that looks like goldenrod to me.  “And this, and all these weeds that are mostly growing around here,” she says,” is dogbane.”  “No, that’s goldenrod,” I insist, “that’s what we have mostly growing around here,” and I point at a patch of weeds that I’m sure must be goldenrod.  “That’s goldenrod, yes,” she says, then pointing back at a plant that looks almost the same to me, “but that’s different, and that’s dogbane.”

State of the Creek:  The creek seems almost unnoticeable today, what with everything that’s growing around it.

The Fetch:  Two fetches today, with the “pro-quality” stick.  Down at the creek, Moi had mentioned that we have Solomon’s seal growing on our property and that, of all places, it grows up along the edge of the fire pit in the walled garden.  So on our way back to the house, I wander over to the fire pit, asking Moi to show me the Solomon’s seal.  “Oh, it’s not coming up now,” she says.