Cardinals Like Berry Cones Like Candles

November 12, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  I go out and work in the morning, getting back at 12:30, which gives me a good stretch of four hours before I have to leave for work tonight, in which to take Mway for a walk.  When I get home Moi and Mway are taking a nap, so I decide to lie down and read myself.  Just as I’m falling asleep, I hear Mway yapping outside.  When I get out of bed, Moi tells me that she was digging up Jerusalem artichokes, and Mway, being outside with her, was barking as she usually does when the two of them are outside together for whatever reason.  She tells me that she ended up throwing some stick for Mway, but regardless of that, I’m now ready to take her for a walk.  Moi tells me, just now before I leave, that this morning on a walk with Mway she scared out some dark ground birds.  I told her I had flushed out a bird the other day; Moi thinks they might be quail, and then she starts to go on and on about something having to do with them.

State of the Path:  See both cardinals and black-capped chickadees in the bare branches of the sumacs, the cardinals looking a little like the red berry cones that stick up like candles on the topmost branches.  At the monkey vine portal, I look at a mass of wool-like stuff lying on the ground which I first noticed the other day;  I poke at it with my walking stick, but I don’t know what to make of it.  A few of the red pods on the plant I noticed the other day have burst open with a cottony fluff, with tiny thin red seeds mixed in.  Between Moi’s wigwams, just about where the ground bird flew to the other day, I see something shining on the ground; I don’t bother to go over to look at what it is.  In bug land, the ground is wet enough that sometimes my walking stick jabs into the mud.  I walk along the creek, cross the swale, and think about going over the plank, but decide not to, Mway already having moved on toward bug land, and me thinking to myself that I’ve already seen enough for the day.

State of the Creek:  Of all things a dragonfly darts about above the big log at the log jam.

The Fetch:  Around the clearing, the goldenrod fuzz shimmers in the sunshine.  I don’t know how many times Mway has already fetched the stick today but she seems as enthusiastic as ever to fetch it again, although we move to level 2 more quickly than usual.  Level 2 goes on for a long time, until I finally toss the stick behind the “chokeberry.”  Mway lollygags there for while, and when she comes running back with the stick in her mouth, she passes me by and heads down the path.