Test Out the New Plank

October 13, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  The new kitten has been in hiding most of the day.  Squeak, seeing it peer once from underneath the laundry tub, growled at it.  I have to work tonight, and after doing preliminary work most of the morning, I’m ready to take Mway for a walk, about 1:21.

State of the Path:  The leaves of the big maple beside the pool are a third green, a third orange, and a third red.  Moi’s garden pond has water in it (been this way since the big rain a week or so ago).  One of the antique farm machines, a disc harrow I believe, has become clearly visible near the walled garden, with yellow leaves of poison ivy sticking out of it.  The floor of the old orchard is covered with red Virginia creeper.  Green gill-of-the-ground grows beneath it, and what looks like a lot of black raspberry brambles grows over it.  Yellow grape vines hang over everything.  Though I thought most of the black walnuts had lost all their leaves, looks like some of them have a few on them yet.  Half the goldenrod is fuzzy white, half a dull-yellow-green-brown.  All the honeysuckles still have green leaves, the Arums still have berries, most of the multiflora is bare.  Between the line of red sumacs and the still green maples the frame of Moi’s second wigwam rises above the goldenrod.  Her first wigwam, which has been collapsing for some time, looks like it’s about ready to fold into itself; a blackberry bramble juts out of it.  What I believe to be the last ironweed flower still rises before the pin oaks, which actually look redder than I once thought, half red, half green.  I’m surprised I see no green black walnuts lying any where on the path (and later I also take the new path up to the summer house and see none there); perhaps the trees didn’t bear any nuts this year.  The New York or New England asters are still blooming, but they’re disappearing (none in the feed channel); the same it seems for the fleabane.  I see other oaks, half-red, half-green (and realize it’s mostly oaks by the creek along the crest of the skating pond).  Along the ridge around bug land, still spot a heal-all or two.

State of the Creek:  Mway moseys into the water, which is shining yellow and green.  I can’t hear the stream gurgling anywhere today, but there’s a lawn mower running in the distance.  After I walk over the plank that crosses the swale, I turn left to the feed channel, which has a little water sitting in it.  I believe I can make it over the new plank, as long as I use my walking stick to support myself.  When I step on the end of the board, the plank begins to bounce, and I hesitate.  It doesn’t look nearly as wide, thick, or strong as it did when I was pulling nails out of it; looks like there’s a crack running down the center of it too.  I take one little step, stab my walking stick into the ground, then scurry across the whole board.  When I’m on sold ground I look behind me and see Mway.  “Go ahead, Mway, walk across it,” I think to myself, but she steps into the ditch and hops out the other side.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, she and I resume trampling down the goldenrod in the wedge, although I have to initiate the work.  After she fetches the birch branch a few times, she starts spinning more and the goldenrod stalks start bending and twisting beneath our feet.