August 24, 2010. Tuesday.
Situation: This morning I was leafing through the Audubon while my computer connection was down because Moi was on the phone, and I noticed that above the photo for the spurred butterfly pea is a photo of some wildflowers that more closely resemble what I’ve been tentatively calling spurred butterfly peas. This is a photo of creeping bush clover. The description seems to fit the bill: “a trailing plant with stems bearing loose clusters of pink to purple, pea-like flowers (1/4 inch long) and clover-like leaves.” My plants don’t have as copious clusters of flowers as what’s shown in the photo and they don’t trail that much, but I think they’re just not doing as well, maybe because of dry weather and competition from poison ivy. Anyway, I’m going to consider these plants to be creeping bush clover for now. So far today it looks like I have no work to do; I’ll recheck my emails a little later this morning. Just before noon, I recheck my emails, and it looks like I have no work coming in today, so I have a free day and can take Mwayla for her walk at any time I want. However, I also need to mow the lawn, so I want to do everything together while I have my walking clothes, which are also my lawnmowing clothes, on. I just went outside to check the lawn to see if the grass was dry yet; I fell down the stoop stairs and twisted my ankle (result of wearing bifocals and loose slippers), but I seem to be okay. I have to wait a little longer for the grass to dry; I also have to be mindful that Moi and Mway are going to take a nap some time this afternoon. Right now I might as well make myself breakfast: a grilled potato from our cook-out with the Boy last night, a tomato or two from our garden, and eggs from our chickens (mixed maybe with turnip greens from the garden), all fried with bacon of course.
State of the Path: Well, there’ll be no checking on the state of the path today, nor the creek, nor any fetch, for, as it turns out, it’s now about 3:04 pm and my ankle is swelling, and I can barely walk on it. When Moi and Mway went up to take a nap, I retired to my bedroom also, read a little bit, and fell asleep for a time. I’d hoped about this time to have marched down to the creek and back with Mway and to be now zooming around the yard behind my self-propelled mower; but it was very slowly that I descended the stairs, very slowly I walked over to the coffee maker, very slowly I ascended back up the stairs. Moi took a look at my ankle, has advised me to keep it elevated. It only hurts a little bit when I’m not stepping on it; but it hurts to walk on it and it just doesn’t work well, and I need it to work well to do the things I’d planned to do. Moi never mows the lawn: so all I can do about that is sit and contemplate it growing higher. But she will take Mway for a walk, and she has done just that, returning now to file a report. First she says that she’s seen a new purple wildflower. “I think they might be what are called Michaelmas daises or wild asters. Look it up,” she says. I look for the names in the Audubon index, but find nothing. When I point to a photo of ironweed, she concedes that that might be what she saw. “Do you want to know more?” she asks. “Yeah,” I say, “tell me what happened.” “Well, down by the creek,” she continues,” Mway and I saw something in the weeds, and then it ran along the creek, but we couldn’t tell what it was.” “Okay,” I say. “Then we saw a frog leap.” “All right.” “Then up beyond the ridge, Mway slinked down and pointed her nose like she saw something, and I said ‘What is it, Mway?’ and pretty soon a rabbit ran out, but Mway didn’t chase it because--,” Moi shrugs and makes a grimace. “Okay.” “Then up at the clearing, I saw where Mway has been beating down the weeds, but I didn’t have a stick with me, so we had to fetch stick in the yard. Mway made me throw one of those big birch branches. Good enough?” she asks. “That’s good,” I say.
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Well, we’re back from upstate New York. A nice visit, not least of all because Moi’s mother, May, likes to prepare meals for everyone, so, for example, yesterday before we left for home in the middle of the afternoon, I had eaten not only a big breakfast but also a big lunch. The day before, when we arrived, Moi’s brother, Arnie, grilled us some white hots for lunch and that night, before I even had time to digest that, his wife Connie made a huge spaghetti and meatball dinner. Arnie took us to the beer store with a coupon that he called a “groupon” and for four dollars we bought an assortment of foreign and microbrewed beers, one of which was a Belgian-style ale in honor of Thelonious Monk, called Brother Thelonious (so now I have sitting at home that beer and another in honor of Miles Davis that the Boy bought me last year called Bitches Brew). That night then we drank beer and watched the Little League playoffs on TV (these games are where the Boy has been working for ESPN). I must say – and I’m not stating this for the benefit of anyone in particular – that Arnie and Connie have two of the ugliest dogs I’ve ever seen, a huge mastiff with a bad underbite named Stella and a pug named Daisy who has about twenty rolls of fat that bunch around her neck like a fur coat made of rat pellets. Arnie and Connie have signs on their front door warning of their guard dogs, but when we arrived on Monday, Stella, despite her huge size and ferocious looking lower incisors sticking out from her maw, slunk away from us in fear and Daisy just bounced around at our feet looking like a heap of dirty underwear. After a while, as these dogs stare at you with their sad Shelly Winter eyes, they become somewhat endearing, but that doesn’t cancel out the fact that as you look at them you can’t help shaking your head in wonder at how someone could invent two such breeds. Yesterday Moi and May took the dogs for a walk – since I needed to work off some of the food I had eaten, I might have gone with them had I caught sight of them before they left. But it probably didn’t matter – it wasn’t much of a walk, just a two minute stroll around the block, limited entirely to the sidewalk.
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