Take a Closer Look at the Plants I Pee On Again

June 11, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  My work day looks pretty much like it did yesterday: I have to work tonight, but I also have some work I should do this afternoon.  So I decide again to take Mway for her morning walk.  It’s about 10:30.  I don’t know if Moi this time of year walks the whole path down to the creek like I do; she doesn’t outfit her walk with special walking clothes, so she doesn’t have the best protection against the vegetation.  I suspect that her walks are rather infrequent, which means that the path doesn’t get as trampled down as much as it could.

State of the Path:  I take a whiz on the same bunch of weeds by the walled garden that I did the other day, and I notice now that they are in flower, or nearly so: a cluster of white buds.  I take note that the stems of the weeds are purple and that the compound leaves that grow staggardly from the stems are shiny and smooth.  I think to myself that I should be able to identify these things; but a look through Audubon just now has revealed nothing.  I go down the side path along the old orchard; it’s amazing the difference an hour makes: although my boots are getting wet a little bit, there’s no longer any dew splattering against my pants.  I whack back a couple blackberry brambles that lean over on the path.  The honeysuckles that I clipped back a few days ago seem to have grown back to where they were before.  Just before the maples, I see a touch-me-not that has flowered; I’m surprised at this because  I think of the jewelweed as flowering late in August – I don’t see any others though, just this one.  The grasses down at the seeps of bug land have dried and bounced back, and I can again see the ground here.  I trip over the loopy grape vine again.  Coming up to the clearing, I see one little weed that has white flowers and kind of fuzzy little leaves; I have no idea what this is either.  Then looking up toward the clearing, I see a shrub that I never saw before that looks like it’s bearing brilliant white flowers; when I get close to it, though, I see that it’s a grape vine, whose reddish leaves were shining in the sun.  I wonder why a grape vine should be growing here, in the middle of goldenrod and poison ivy.

State of the Creek:  The water is lower again: hard to see barely a trickle through the rocks.  A frog leaps into the water as I’m walking along, and I think I hear a frog croaking by the crest of the skating pond; but last year as I walked along the creek, I’d see or hear a dozen frogs plop into the water, an indication of how dry this spring has been.   The feed channel is dry again; a cob web collapses into my face as I step across it.  I decide to check to see if there’s any water in the pond between the ridges.  I have to step a ways into the weeds; when I get to where the pond is, I see that it too is dry.

The Fetch:   Mway fetches the “pro-quality” stick more times than I care to count.  I note that the weeds in the clearing are most trampled down where Mway spins around waiting for my next toss, and where I’m also stamping around with my feet.   As Mway fetches the stick, I try to move my position forward more into the weeds to extend the area where they’re trampled down.  Mway helps me out with this, since she doesn’t always bring the stick all the way back, and I usually have to take a step forward to pick it up.