While McNeighbor Chainsaws Our Tree, I Clip Back along the Path

July 20, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  Work this afternoon, and take Mway out about 4:30.  Earlier this morning I heard a chain saw and thought I’d better walk out toward the back acre to make sure one of the McNeighbors wasn’t making some sort of incursion on our land (as at least one has done in the past, namely, by cutting down trees and dumping spare cement on the ground).  I see two guys amidst some sawed-off branches near a black walnut tree, and figure this must be the McNeighbor concerned about black walnuts dirtying his McLawn and finally getting around to trimming back the tree.  Before I go out on the walk, Moi goes out to check the apple trees by the outbuilding.  She’s a little upset because the small apples she had seen on the tree are now all gone.  “I wonder if they were blown away by the wind,” she says.  We also check her plum tree.  This year was the first year any plums turned purple on the tree, but in the course of the season they all dried up and rotted on the ground.

State of the Path:  I bring along the clippers to widen the path a little as I thought about doing yesterday.  Mainly I just work along the main path from the walled garden down to the wigwams, cutting back goldenrod, sumac saplings, briars, honeysuckle and red willow branches, and trying not to touch any plant that’s not so prevalent, namely, the moth mullein near the wigwams.  My legs are still sore from yesterday’s mowing, and I do a fairly half-ass job, but it’s better than nothing.  Hardest to clip back is the grass, and I don’t even bother with any of the red grass down at bug land, although this is pretty much still covering up the path after being beaten down by the last rain, and it would be nice to clip this back.  Coming along the ridge around bug land, I see a new wildflower, purple and tall, in the middle of bug land, and I walk over into the tall grass, to look at what are more than a half dozen of these plants.  Damn, though, if I can find this plant right now in Audubon.

State of the Creek:  The rock bed between the tree stand and the black walnut tree is almost completely dry, and the rock beds between the other pools are drying, so the pools are becoming disconnected again.  At the pool at the log jam, I watch some sort of dragonfly darting across some newly exposed mud.

The Fetch:  I see a cardinal fly across the clearing as I’m walking toward it – haven’t seen one of these in a while, though I’ve probably been hearing them all summer, invisible in the honeysuckles.  Up at the clearing, I see there’s a new giant anthill in front of the red willow at the corner of the clearing, and I do see one ant crawling around on top of it.  I realize that in past days I’ve been throwing the stick towards this anthill a lot, so today I try to throw the stick in a different direction.  Mway fetches the “pro-quality” stick more times than I care to count – many of the tosses end up being toward the ant hill anyway.  After playing “Put it down” a number of times, Mway dashes after the stick, then just stands in the middle of the goldenrod, panting and looking back at me with her tongue hanging out.   I think maybe she might have stuck her nose in a nettle, but I don’t see any when I walk up to the stick.  Probably she’s just worn herself out, and I toss the stick one more time, and we head back to the house.