Look Again at Virgin's Bower and Other Plants

August 18, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  I have to work tonight.  After Moi takes Mway out in the morning (just to fetch stick I assume), Mway waits the rest of the day for me to take her for a walk.  First, while I’m in the office on the computer, she waits for me against my bedroom door.  Then, when I go downstairs, she waits for me under the piano bench.  When I go into the music room, she waits for me in the corner of the music room.  Finally, around 2 pm, I decide to take her out (it’s cloudy and looks like it could rain soon).  While I’m putting my walking clothes on in the bedroom, she stands waiting for me in the doorway.  When I go downstairs to put on my boots, helmet, and gloves, she stands waiting for me by the kitchen table.

State of the Path:  I bring along the Audubon, and look again at the virgin’s bower.  Its petals, the book says, are actually its sepals.  The vine throws white flowers over those plants that this spring had white flowers of its own: multiflora, blackberries, honeysuckles.  Down by the creek, I try to see if the flowering vine growing over the plants down there is common moonseed.  I don’t see anything that looks like a moonseed leaf – in fact, I can’t find any leaves for this vine.  It seems to twine around the stem, say, of a goldenrod, and looks more like coral than a flower.  Near the “chokeberries” beyond the swale, I again see one of the little purple plants I saw yesterday.  Because it’s growing up beside some poison ivy, I think for a moment that it might be poison ivy too, but then I see its leaves are different.  It looks too small to try to identify, and I don’t bother to open the Audubon.  Behind me a starling or a cowbird squawks at me in a maple tree.

State of the Creek:  I don’t bother to look too closely at the creek.  It looks pretty much the same as it did yesterday.

The Fetch:  I toss the stick, and after about five fetches, Mway starts coaxing me to play “Put it down.”  After playing “Put it down” about four or five times, she stands there and doesn’t drop the stick, so I say “Good enough.”  But she doesn’t move, so I say “Put it down.”  But she doesn’t drop the stick, so I say “Good enough” again.  She doesn’t move, and I say “Put it down” again.  Finally, I just turn around and start heading back to the house, and Mway follows.