First Walk After We Get Back

August 11, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  Moi and I got home last night at midnight.   It’s now 9:46, and I hear Moi saying “Poor tiny Mway.”  “Why poor tiny Mway?” I ask.  “Because I haven’t yet taken her for a walk,” she says.  “This morning,” she continues, “I let Squeak out.  But she was immediately surrounded by chickens, and came running back in.”  Last night Mway was certainly happy to see us, but it was not such that she could not contain her excitement.   After all she had probably been asleep, and Monday night through Tuesday evening Barb had been around to maintain her routine of walks, fetching, and eating .  This is the third time this year Moi and I have been out of town overnight; prior to that, since we’ve gotten Mway, I don’t think we were ever away together.   But unlike our previous blue healer, Spot (who used to chew window casements and claw doors if we were both out only for hours), Mway is good staying home alone, and, for overnight, we’ve discovered it works well with some one like Barb who can house sit and take her for a walk.  I just told Moi I’d take Mway out for a walk (I have to work tonight, and maybe I won’t take her for a walk later).  It’s now 10:07.  Mway’s been smiling since I’ve started moving to put on my walking clothes.

State of the Path:   I find the “pro-quality” stick under the bench where I’d hidden it.  Terribly muggy, but hardly a drop of dew on the plants.  Ground looking even drier.  Sound of cicadas, katydids, or whatever.  A briar or two I haven’t clipped back snags me here and there.  Orange jack-in-the-pulpit seeds now lying on the ground. I walk by the big “chokeberry,” forgetting to look at it, but when I glance back, see its purple black berries.  After I take a quick look at the creek bed beneath the tree stand, I lose my footing on some dry loose ground and fall back into the multiflora bush.   A lot of little, fritillary-like butterflies flitting here and there.

State of the Creek:  The creek is now reduced to three puddles and a pool.  A puddle at the log jam, another at the bend before the narrows, and there’s still a puddle about 4 feet away from the vinyl siding, but with only about an inch of water in it and little bugs in it.  Along the crest of the skating pond, a pool extends back toward the swale from bug land – maybe more than 15 feet, but I can’t tell because I lose sight of it behind the honeysuckles and other bushes.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, I don’t see any grasshoppers, which I only saw one day a week or so back.  Usually this time of the year is when you start to see young grasshoppers hopping from one goldenrod stem to the next, and larger grasshoppers flying with their black wings along the ground.  Only one fetch from Mway – that’s alright with me, but still I think: so this is the grand welcome home?  Sweat’s dropping off my forehead as I’m writing this – time to go into the pool.