It Doesn't Matter It's Our 30th Wedding Anniversary

August 17, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  Yesterday afternoon, after mowing the lawn, I hopped into the pool.  The filter hadn’t been on during the recent rainy spells, and the water was covered with fruit flies.  A fruit fly is what I believe I had seen on my shirt.  Last night Moi reminded me that today is our wedding anniversary, and this morning she reminds me that it’s our 30^th anniversary.  I work for a while in the afternoon, and when I come back about 4, Moi is still at work herself, and Mway is waiting for me under the piano bench.  I hung my walking clothes on the line yesterday, so I have to go out and get them, before I take Mway on her walk.

State of the Path:  I feed the chickens on my way out to get my clothes, so I don’t have to deal with Mway trying to corral them.  I throw the feed in some high grass I missed mowing, so the chickens will tear it up.  When I sit down to put on my socks, I feel the prick of a bur under my ass, which I have to pull off of the seat of my pants.  My strategy working, Mway ignores the chickens and heads to the path.  McNeighbor kids are screaming in one of the big McNeighborPools. I decide to take the side path, but I miss it and have to back track, the goldenrod hems in the path so much.  My foot gets wrapped up in a grape vine.  Some of the jack-in-the-pulpit seeds have turned red.  By the hedgerow, there’s a new flowering vine, covering many of the plants, with a bumblebee and butterflies feasting on it.  Flowers in clusters, with 4 petals, spidery anthers, lobed leaves; I’m shocked I find it so easily in Audubon: it’s virgin’s bower.  A giant pokeweed has come up in front of the maple tree.  Down by the creek, still wonder what the flowering vine is down there (could it be common moonseed?).  Among them, I see a little purple flower, and later by the ridge, another purple flower.  I pretend not to notice them.

State of the Creek:  Some kind of dragonfly hovers over the log jam, then perches on a grass stem and stares at me with Day-glo green eyes.  It follows me along the creek for a while.  Creamy new mud under the big locusts where yesterday there was still a puddle of water.   Mway doesn’t go into the water until the pool at the crest of the skating pond.

The Fetch:  I find my mind wandering as I’m tossing the stick; in fact, I find myself composing this very sentence in my head.  Finally I toss the stick over by the “chokeberry” bush, and Mway has to lunge several times into the weeds before she gets a grip on the stick, and this spurs her to stop fetching and start heading back to the house.   In the back yard, I see her go by the pool float again under the maple tree; apparently there is water in there, and she has a choice of dirty pools to cool off in.