Manage to Fit in Moi's Birthday

June 13, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  Work all day today.  When I get home, Barb Dennehy is at the house, and over a key lime pie, we celebrate Moi’s 60^th birthday.  Barb leaves about 7:30, and I take Mway out for her walk.  Moi comes along.

State of the Path:  While I’m looking at the mulberries on the white mulberry tree, wondering if they’re edible, Moi wanders over to the garden.  I take a step or two further to the plum trees, then wait for Moi to show up.  I point out to her a black walnut tree growing under the plum trees, and to my question about whether she wants that there, she says, “No, anytime you want to cut that down, go ahead.”  I ask Moi if she ever saw a jack-in-the-pulpit fruit, and she says no.  We walk the side path to take a look at some, and she is surprised by how they look, even wondering if they’re edible.  “It’s really getting to be jungle out here,” she says, as we walk through the ever narrowing path, approaching the thick area of goldenrod where the side path rejoins the main path.  “This ragweed is getting ridiculous,” she says, and I have to correct her, pointing out that the main weed where we’re walking is goldenrod.  I look for the moth mullein that I spotted yesterday to point out to Moi, but its flowers are not opened up on this overcast day, so I pass by it without saying anything.  Moi points out one of the flowering elderberry shrubs, and I say, yep, that’s what it is.  She wanders off into the field to look at something while I’m still looking at the mullein plant.  She catches up to me, and down by the creek, she notes the other elberberry shrubs that are flowering down there.  My feet are getting wet because it rained a little today, but my pants are not getting as soaked as they did a few mornings ago.  I tell Moi to watch out for the loopy grape vine, and she steps over it carefully, but a little ways away, she almost trips over some of the locust branches that are hidden in the jewelweed.  Underneath one of the locust trees, a dead branch is hanging down, stuck in some other branches, and when I walk underneath it, the dead branch falls down, thankfully before Moi reaches it.  Moi notices the white flowers on what I’ve been calling the red willows and wonders what kind of shrub it is.  “Red willow,” I tell her, with much uncertainty.  “No,” Moi replies, “They’re probably some kind of honeysuckle,” and I look, with some consternation, at the flowers that do indeed look a little like honeysuckle flowers.  As I walk along, looking carefully where we’re stepping, I see a few flashes of fireflies in the shadows of the weeds.  After we cross the swale to bug land, Moi ventures over to the feed channel to look at her sweet flag.  “I don’t know if these get flowers or not,” she says.  “I think they do get green flowers,” I say, “but maybe they’re too much in the shade of that honeysuckle bush.”  “Maybe,” Moi agrees.  Suddenly it starts raining hard, and we both hustle to get back to the house.  On our way up toward the clearing, though, Moi points to the ground.  “Here are some deer droppings,” she says.  “Oh, are those deer droppings?” I ask, knowing exactly what she’s talking about, and then looking at the droppings that for several days now I thought were rabbit droppings.

State of the Creek:  I see some water striders in the pool behind the log jam, and then, just as I think I see something rather lizardlike scooting across the water, Moi points out Mway’s gray body wiggling around in the weeds across the creek.  “I thought for a minute that was a wild animal over there,” she says.

The Fetch:   Although it’s starting to rain, I still stop at the clearing to toss the “pro-quality” stick for Mway.  I stand just a little ways into the goldenrod, so that she will trample a greater area of the clearing while she’s spinning around, and I see that the goldenrod stems do bend and are crushed under her paws.  Mway fetches the stick more times than I care to count, but gratefully, since it’s raining, not for too long.