Clippers Possibly Calling Out to a Bird

October 1, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  This morning shortly after I wake up Moi tells me it’s urgent that we close up the pool today.  Although I have to work this afternoon and planned to do other things this morning, I tell her I can help out.  I go out and start scooping up leaves out of the pool, but Moi can’t get the filter started to back-flush it and do the last vacuuming that she wants to do – the circuit keeps breaking every time she tries to turn it on.  Meanwhile Moi yells at me because she thinks I should start a whirlpool to swirl the leaves into the center, but I keep ignoring her because I believe you can’t create a good whirlpool without the filter running.  Mway stands in the yard, looking at us with a stick in her mouth.  Eventually Moi decides we need to let the filter dry out, so she takes the cover off.  She says we’ll get to it again later today – I’m not sure when.  Right now I have to get ready to go to work.  I get back shortly after 2, and in a minute or two here I’ll take Mwayla for her walk.  I think I’ll bring the clippers with me, and afterward I might try to mow at least part of the lawn, which I haven’t had to do for weeks.   Coming down the street just now, I saw a McNeighbor woman out power walking.  I’d like to enlist her to mow my lawn; that way she could get her exercise and be useful too.  I saw another McNeighbor out today, an older guy with a push mower; she could mow both of our yards all summer and watch that flab melt off of her.

State of the Path:  Outside Mway picks up the stick she had earlier this morning and starts carrying it to the path with her.  I think about saying something to her about it, because I have the birch branch, the stick I intend to toss, but then I think she’ll probably drop the stick somewhere along the way.  Sure enough as soon as I start clipping I see the stick on the pathway, dropped there and forgotten.  I stick to the main path and clip mostly goldrenrod, which we have plenty of, but I end up clipping some fleabane and dried boneset too, and maybe some rarer wildflowers I would have liked to have kept growing – like the moth mullein.  As I approach the maples, a bird is singing “wheet- tooer, wheet-tooer, wheet-tooer, wheet.”  Later on I realize that the squeaky hinges of my clippers are making a similar sound, and I wonder if the bird was calling out to that.  In bug land I don’t have to do much clipping.  Moi’s smartweed is starting to disappear, and it never did get any longer flowers.  I resume clipping some more goldenrod down by the creek and through the “chokeberry” stand beyond the swale.  The hardest place for clipping is just beyond the ridge, where it’s hard to clip the high grass that grows there.  By the time I’m marching up toward the clearing, although there’s a lot of goldenrod there, I just ignore it because I’m tired.

State of the Creek:  Mway goes in the stream at the tree stand, and I hear her splashing through the water.  It’s still flowing, brown now and not as high.  Water-swept grass and jewelweed lie flat along the banks.  Water swishes around the oak tree whose tree trunk bottom was once exposed.  Cow piss foam builds up against the first log at the log jam.  The water gurgles over the rock cascades.  By the big tree where I used to see the red-bellied woodpecker, a few big branches have been knocked down by the wind, crisscross over some grape vines.

The Fetch:  Mway goes after only about four tosses and starts heading back toward the house, looking back at me.  For some reason I don’t say “good enough” but I shout “put it down,” and then she starts fetching the stick more times than I care to throw it.