Pee on Unidentifiable Weeds

June 6, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  As it turned out, Mway didn’t have to spend the day in the kennel at Ezra’s; Moi decided to let Mway stay here at the house during the wedding, since the Boy would be returning in the evening afterwards.  Moi and I spent the night at her sister Kate’s hotel suite in H______; I had to get up early to drive back for work in the late morning (as it turned out work, at a different place than usual, was canceled after an hour due to passing storms).  I’ve returned home, and Mway is waiting outside for me to come out, anxious for a walk.  It’s about 3:15 pm.

State of the Path:  I decide before heading out to sweep up some of the debris in the pool, mostly yellow willow leaves from the distressed tree in our yard and the branchy seed-like things (catkins?) from the maple right next to the pool.  Moi arrives while I’m doing this, and Mway, losing her patience with me, starts chasing some of the chickens, until first I and then Moi yell at her.  I see that I’m going to have to head out directly, and get the “pro-quality” stick from the porch.  At the walled garden I take a whiz – as I’m doing so I suddenly realize I’m peeing on a fine patch of weeds of a type that I never noticed before.  They’re not goldenrod, or Moi’s dogbane (later I bring a specimen in the house; Moi can’t identify it either).  Along the old orchard, the Virginia creeper has leaves as big as burdock (if the leaves of our burdock were not the size of sofa cushions).  Winding back from the hedge row, with every step I beat down goldenrod, milkweed, and every other weed on my right hand side with my stick, until the goldenrod becomes so thick I give up on the task.   I look for lingering signs of the storm that passed through while I was at work, and conclude that maybe it didn’t rain here; the ground and the weeds are remarkably dry.  The only evidence I see is that here and there the jewelweed is flattened down.   Along the seeps of bug land, the spikelets of grass (timothy?) tower over my head and wave in the breeze.  The elderberry flowers are getting fatter.  The green flowers on what I’ve been calling red willows are starting to turn white.  Watching not to trip over the dead locust branches hidden in the weeds, I bang my head on a low tree branch – which is one of the reasons I wear a safari helmet on these walks.  In an oak tree near the crest of the skating pond, a number of black birds (if I could see better with my old contacts, maybe I’d be able to tell that they are redwing blackbirds) fly around in a fit and chatter up a storm.  The phlox has disappeared.   The sumac tree that has fallen over the far feed channel and blocks the path there still lives, bearing as many leaves as any of the other many sumacs.

State of the Creek:  If it did rain here, there’s no sign of it from the water level of the creek.  At one point Mway walks in to cool off and take a sip.

The Fetch:  Even though there’s a breeze, by the time I reach the clearing I’m hot and sweaty.  I throw the stick toward the bushes, and for a minute I think Mway’s not going to be able to find it in the goldenrod.  But she does find it, and for all her anxiousness about taking a walk today, only fetches it about four times.