Berries, Flowers, Birds: None of Which I Identify Properly

September 14, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  Moi has to drive down to her doctor  for her periodic treatment for hypothryroid and chronic Lyme.  I have piddling work to do in the early afternoon.  Lou the security man, back at the metal detector after a stroke, has a whopper of a cough; usually he doesn’t do it, so why today does he finger though my keys, coins, and cigarette lighter I lay out in the tray?  Big Joe Duskin, which somebody gave to me, plays on the new car CD player.  Back home I take advantage of Moi’s absence.  Mway slams the door on herself.  Walk at 4:47, going to open the door now.

State of the Path:  I don’t bring the Audubon with me today, but I wish I had:  I still don’t know what the bushes with the red berries are.  Pull out goldenrod here and there as I walk along, but when I see a honey bee on a stalk, I wait for it to leave first.  I don’t hold out much more hope that Moi’s smartweed flowers will get any longer, and that they will soon look like the photo in the book.  At the creek, hear what sounds like a crow, then a piercingly clear call.  See a bird in the trees; let’s call it a catbird, though I really have no idea what it is.  At the swale, the New York or New England asters are really starting to spread out; I see them even under a “chokerberry” bush.  Under the same bush, there’s a stalk of something or other.  At first I think it’s part of the “chokeberry,” because it has blue berries.  But these berries are bluer than what I’ve been seeing on the “chokeberries,” and the leaves are toothed, not like the ones on the “chokeberry,” and the stalk has thorns.  Now what the hell could this be?

State of the Creek:  At the log jam, I see a new wildflower on the opposite bank, and I think, god damn, not yet another wildflower to try to identify.  But then I see the large green sepals and I recognize the same plant that I saw the other day by the crest of the skating pond; its yellow flowers still have not opened up:  they look like little paint brushes.  I recall that this is how the ironweed looked for weeks, before they started to open up.  I’m happy to see a second one of this type of plant, but, god damn, I still don’t know what it is.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, I hear the be-bop call of the jazz bird; haven’t heard this bird much this summer, and still haven’t established what it is exactly – is it a chickadee?  (I should clarify that I haven’t been paying much attention to birds at all this summer, because they’re so hard to see with leaves on the trees.)  Hear the birch branch crack on the first throw.  When Mway brings it back, it’s still intact, but after the next throw, it breaks apart, the one piece dangling like a bolo on a couple tosses, until it finally falls off.  Mway’s teeth look so sharp when she carries the stick back and barks at me to throw it, but if I hide the stick behind my back, she squats and smiles, and the teeth disappear beneath the pink ribbon of tongue which drapes over them.