Too Early for Flowers, Too Early for a Human

July 3, 2010.  Saturday.

Situation:  Last night Wade apologized for the things he said to me the night before, as I expected he would; nevertheless I performed my job, not quite like an automaton, but still very stoically.  After work, again, I fell asleep in front of the TV, and this time I awoke to the British attacking Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, a repeat of a History Channel show that had been on before I fell asleep.  I checked the time on the channel guide: it was 7 forty something.  I started going through my chores, minus turning on the computer, which I had never turned off the night before, but with the addition of turning off some of the lights that I had left blazing all night.  It felt like I was doing a lot of things twice, like rinsing out the coffee pot, then rinsing it out again.  Again Squeak turned up her nose at the cat food I nuked for her.  By the time I had my walking clothes on and was ready to go out the door, I still hadn’t seen Mway, and for a moment I thought I’d left her outside all night:  I remembered letting her out but I couldn’t remember letting her in.  But when I open the back door to see if she’s outside, she comes stumbling down the stairs.

State of the Path:  When I go to the cage to let the chickens out, I’m surprised to see that they’re all still back in the coop.  Apparently it’s even too early for the chickens to have roused themselves.  Out on the path, the day lilies have not yet opened – I note that it’s not that they have dried up, it’s simply that they haven’t opened up, same for the fleabane, and I think to myself that if it’s too early for the flowers to open up certainly it’s too early for a human being to be walking around.  Nevertheless, I like being out walking in the morning; the freshness and coolness of the air, the sunlight’s slant, the long shadows; it’s all preferable to the stale heat and uniform light of midafternoon.  And I like the idea that I’m walking around and, while waiting for the coffee to drip, spending the first forty-five minutes of my day without having a cigarette.  I look curiously again at one of the plants that I haven’t been able to identify yet, the one that I had peed on.  I had thought there were flowers coming out on them, but this morning I don’t see any, and I feel a little upset that I’ll probably never be able to identify this pretty plant, with its purple stems and smooth, criss-crossed leaves.  The grasses at the seeps in bug land are definitely a bit bedraggled.  Under the maples, where in the spring jewelweed had sprung up like mad, there are now only a few stalks of goldenrod.  I see cracks in the dry dirt of the path by the wigwams.  Under the young hickories, the ground is bare and brown.  The blackberries have in the last few days turned red, the sumac berries are bright red, and it’s too bad honeysuckle berries are not edible for human beings, because they have been firm and plentiful for weeks now.

State of the Creek:  All of the pools that were there yesterday are still there, but I’m sure they’re shrinking.  I can smell the fresh mud as I walk along the creek.

The Fetch:  When I get to the clearing, I have no idea where Mway is, and I call out her name.  Usually she comes running to me within a few seconds, but after a few minutes, I still see no sign of her, and I call out her name again.  It would be a good time for me to take in the vista, as I wanted to do yesterday, but because I’m waiting I don’t feel like it.  A few more minutes pass – it seems like ten minutes, and I start to worry that Mway might be in trouble, that maybe she fell into a hole, or got bitten by a raccoon.  I start walking back down the path, calling out Mwayla’s full name and sounding it repeatedly; just as I get a little ways into the poison ivy patch, I hear her body brushing against the goldenrod behind me.  As she brings back the stick after the first toss, she lollygags sniffing the goldenrod; I can tell that she had been absorbed simply in smelling around at things.  I toss the stick for her more times than I care to count, more times than I care to, period.  As she’s fetching the stick, I start wondering exactly how many times she is fetching it: is it twenty times? thirty times?  We play “Put it down,” a sign finally that she’s getting tired of fetching.  We play it a couple more times, and then she runs past me, carrying the stick back to the house.  I have no work today, and I look forward to not having to do anything.  However, as I’ve been writing this, the water pump has been going on and off; I’ve checked all the faucets and the two toilets, and nothing seems to be running, and now I’m afraid I’m going to have to worry about this.  And right now the chickens are on the porch, bucking and crowing up a storm.

Addendum: I take Mway out again in the late afternoon, at 6, after lying around all day watching the History Channel and reading the Smithsonian magazine during the commercials, even falling asleep for a time – delighting in the fact that I have no work to do today: I don’t even have to think about mowing the lawn, or paying bills, or doing some sort of errand.  I managed to contact Moi about the water pump, and she told me to twist the stopper in the laundry room toilet to secure its seal; that worked, and the problem was solved shortly after noon.  On my walk with Mway I bring along the Audubon.  Both of us see something moving in the weeds down by the maples; I yell at Mway not to chase after it, and she obeys.  My main focus is to identify the plant that I peed on the other week, and which I finally again discover some flowering, or at least budding, specimens of on the way to the clearing.  Again I consider that it might be Tartarian honeysuckle – but I’m not happy with the fact that it’s only now just budding.  Then I think it might be winged sumac, but the only similarity really is the purple stem.   I also consider that it might be witherod, or wild raisin, but this plant has toothed leaves, and mine doesn’t.  However, just now, I read more closely in Audubon that the “margins [of the leaves are] usually wavy or toothed, occasionally untoothed” [emphasis mine].  Anyway, I think I will have to see how the plant continues flowering, and see what kind of seed it gets, before I rule out witherod.  Whatever the plant is, there are a couple specimens of it in the clearing, which Mway runs over today as she’s dashing after the stick.