It Doesn't Matter It's 9/11

September 11, 2010.  Saturday.

Situation:  Moi tells me this morning that she checked the mattress she’s going to give to the Boy (apparently it’s the mattress from the guest room and not one that was being stored in the corn crib).  “I hate to say this,” she says, “but it has a pee stain on it.  Probably from Spook many years ago.  I don’t want to haul a mattress with a pee stain all the way to New York.”  So she says she’s going to give the Boy my mattress instead, and I can use the pee-stained mattress.  “That would be okay for me to use?” I ask.  “Oh yes.  That’s what you have a bed sheet for.  I can put a rubber covering around it if you want.”  “It doesn’t stink or anything?” I pursue the matter.  “No.  No,” she eases my concerns, “it’s probably been there for ten years.”  Moi goes into town for something or other, and when she comes back, she enlists me in holding the ladder so she can paint a patch of the house, or least as far up as she’s not afraid to go.  It’s not a pleasant task because the sun is rounding the corner of the house and shining in my face.  At one point Moi says something or other about what she’s doing and I step to the side of the ladder to see what she’s talking about, after which she yells at me because I’m no longer standing square in the middle of the ladder and holding it with both hands.  I notice that Moi has tacked two gold numerals to the trim of the house to indicate our postal address, something she’s done since working on her temporary job this summer, where she learned to appreciate a house having its number marked somewhere on its façade.  I note, though, that the numerals she put up are obscured from the driveway by a bush in front of them – I don’t know what type of bush it is, sad to say.  It’s a pleasant day, and I’m happy to be outside, even with the sun shining in my face.  The chickens are milling around the pallets under the hemlock where we store bags of wood pellets for the winter, and Mway is hanging around outside, for the most part behaving herself, barking once when a McNeighbor pulls into his driveway and venturing up into our driveway to roll around in something or other, which I don’t make mention of to Moi.  When Moi and I walk over to the corn crib to pull out the box spring we’re going to give to the Boy, Mway follows, leaping across the lawn with a big smile on her face, fully expecting that we’re going to take her for a walk and throw stick. Of course, we disappoint her when we drag out the box spring instead.  Moi and I both work tonight, together at the same place.  Sometime before then I’ll take Mway for her walk.  It’s now 3:35, and I’m waiting for Moi and Mway to wake up from their naps; if they don’t wake up by the time I put on my walking clothes, I’ll pop open the door.

State of the Path:  Moi opens the door while I’m typing the period of the last sentence, then opens my office door, and Mway walks in, then walks out, and is now pacing the hallway.  Outside I survey the lawn – no way it needs mowing.  Just beyond the walled garden I see some white daisy-like flowers.  I open the Audubon I brought with me and quickly posit that they are pinnacled asters – nothing in the description tells me they’re not.  As soon as I step into the great mass of the goldenrod – it looks like every stem has a yellow spike – I see honey bees all around, probably one for every five flowers – and probably these are the honey bees from our chimney.  When I brush away the goldenrod that droops into the path, I’m careful to try not to disturb any of the bees.  Past the wigwams, I check on Moi’s “Pennsylvania smartweed” – the flowers haven’t gotten any longer.  More honey bees in the touch-me-nots, and bumblebees as well.  Down along the creek, I see some more white daisy-like flowers, a little bedraggled.  I think, for what reason I don’t know, that these might be something other than pinnacled asters, and I check to see if they might be meadow rue or virgin’s bower, getting irritated with myself when I come upon the photos of these flowers that I’ve forgotten so quickly what they look like – the flowers here look nothing like those plants, and maybe they’re pinnacled asters as well.

State of the Creek:  The puddle at the narrows is nothing more than a couple spots of water, and even the puddle below the swale, though still long, has shriveled into the middle of the creek bed.  Below it plants are growing in the middle of the creek bed, and among them what looks to me like a striking oddity: a daisy-like plant with green petals and a yellow pistil.  I excitedly open up the Audubon, wondering what this strange plant could be, when, while still looking over the plant, I realize that what I think are petals are probably the large sepals of a yellow-petaled flower that simply has not opened up in the shade.

The Fetch:  More fetches than I bother to count, more than I care to throw.  Between tosses, I catch glimpses of a vista of an acre or more of goldenrod sloping toward the skating pond, punctuated by maple trees, cedar bushes, but most distinctively at this time of year, by the dry ruddy-brown crowns of the “chokeberry” shrubs.