Attempt to Distinguish Goldenrod Types

August 20, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  This morning I wake up to the great racket of Mway barking on and on.  I know she’s getting excited as Moi is getting ready to take her out.  “Take her out, already,” I think to myself.  Later on I ask Moi if she took Mway for a full walk or just fetching.  “Just fetching,” Moi says, “and she only fetched the stick once.”  “All that barking,” I think to myself, “and just one fetch.”  “Mway was being lazy,” Moi says with affectionate overemphasis.  “Lazy.  Lazy.  Lazy.”   I have to work tonight, and I think I’ll do some other work before that, so I decide to take Mway out earlier than I did yesterday; and since she didn’t do much this morning, either in the way of a walk or fetching, she might be ripe for both now.  It’s 12:01.

State of the Path:  I bring along the Audubon.  After rounding the bend on the side path at the hedgerow, passing the virgin’s bower and the giant pokeweed, I decide to try my luck at distinguishing the different types of goldenrod again.  With a briar on either side of me jagging my shoulders, I open the book and look at the yellow flowering patch before me.  It looks to me that what I see is tall goldenrod, although the flowers are not quite as full as the photo in the book.  Reading about lance-leaved goldenrod, I see that the book says it is characterized by “each branch bearing a flat-topped cluster of small yellow flower heads.”  I’ve seen a goldenrod-type plant that has a green cluster on each stem, but I have yet to see any of these burst into flower; and I see a few of these as I walk further along.  Down near the wigwams, then, I see some goldenrod that has toothed leaves.  I look again in the book, and my best guess is that this is rough-stemmed goldenrod, although I’m troubled by the description that the leaves are very hairy and wrinkled, which mine don’t seem to be.  I take the side path along the skating pond, whack down the briar that thrust itself before me the other day.  On my way back across the feed channel, my foot slides backward down the ditch, and I can almost feel my neck muscles twist, but I appear okay.  Among the “chokeberry” bushes I look again at the little purple flower, which I decide today looks more pink than purple.  When I set down my stick to open the book, I realize I’m setting it down in some poison ivy, so I move it to the other side of me against a “chokeberry.” I touch the flowers of the little plant, careful not to touch any of the poison ivy surrounding it.  The tiny flowers seem odd to me, with a kind of double petal on one side and a narrower petal on the other side.  I don’t see anything in the book that looks like them, and I think to myself that these flowers are so tiny and insignificant I wish I had never seen them.

State of the Creek:  Mway wades into the creek at her old spot, the pool under the big maple, and meets me again on the path, coming up on the other side of the honeysuckles.  Vinyl siding a foot or so from the edge of the water.

The Fetch:  Mway launches into a good bout of fetching, spinning and barking, and now and then I throw the stick into the taller goldenrod to give her a special challenge.  Coming back into the walled garden, I hear what sounds like a little child (a McChild?) saying hi.  I hear the sound again, and I realize it’s one of the hens.  Then Moi, up on top of the walled garden, calls out to me, do I see the hen?  She’s out looking to see where some of the hens have been hiding their eggs.  I don’t see the hen anywhere.  In the yard, I see Mwayla’s dropped the stick near the apple tree, and she’s up at the driveway barking.  I think maybe she’s barking at the chickens, but then Moi tells me Mway’s found a woodchuck.