Red Willows, After All This Time, Not Red Willows

August 3, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  I work this afternoon and take Mway for a walk when I come home about 5.  Last evening, after grilling a venison roast outside, Moi was inspired to take a walk down to the creek (which she admitted she hasn’t done in a while).  I put on my walking clothes minus my gloves, but Moi, despite me telling her to put on some protective clothes, just took off in overall shorts and a T-shirt.  I didn’t bother taking a stick, since Mway already fetched enough that day.  Moi took a lot of photos with her iPhone, and we looked at the ironweed, which Moi didn’t know the name of.  On the opposite bank of the creek, Moi saw a shrubby wildflower with clusters of small white flowers that I’d never noticed before.  At first she called it a young elderberry bush, until she saw an elderberry bush right in front of her, which didn’t look like whatever it was across the creek.  Most disturbing of all, however, was that I asked Moi again about the name of the shrubs I’ve been calling red willow, and Moi said, “No, that’s not red willow.  I’ve looked it up before – it’s something like moon berry, something with the word “moon” in it.”   After our walk, I checked through the index of the Audubon, and all I could find was moonseed, which definitely is not the shrub that’s so prevalent on our property.

State of the Path:  Right out the door, twenty chickens come running toward me in an arc around the lilac bush, while along another arc Mway goes chasing after a rabbit.  After her chase, she squats in the back yard; she squats again at Moi’s garden pond; then she squats a third time on the side path along the orchard.  I don’t feel like taking the side path, so Mway ends up running to catch up with me on the main path.   The path could use trimming again: many grasses thwart the path, and though the base of the path might be 2 or even 3 feet wide, the weeds bend in a lot closer than that to each other.  I look again at whatever the red willows are; some of the green berries they’ve been bearing for a long time are starting to turn blue, which does look kind of moonish to me.  I take a look again at the bushy plant on the other side of the creek; the creek bank is steep here, so I can’t get a close look without going through a lot of trouble; the flowers seem to be getting frizzy to me.  I see that the thread-like vine growing over the jewelweed has tiny white flowers of its own.  In bug land, I look again at another plant that Moi noticed last night.  I’ve noticed it before, but since I have no name for it, never mentioned it.  It’s growing all over where the heal-all is growing, and looks like a tiny white oak sapling, with about 4 leaves.  So far I haven’t noticed any flowers on it.

State of the Creek:  I see that the creek is dry up towards Hutchinson’s land.  The vinyl siding is now about 2 feet from the edge of the water.  A large bird flies out of the creek bed (some kind of a duck?).  I see a dark form run, or maybe hop, along the edge of bug land, then I see another dark form skirting the creek.  Mway sees the latter too, and runs looking for whatever it is, ending up on the dirt bar near the swale from bug land.

The Fetch:  Mway starts out gung-ho with her fetches, but after her second fetch, she stands with the stick in her mouth, testing to see if I will tell her to put it down or simply turn around to head back to the house.  We play “Put it down” several times, before she runs right past me to head down the path.