I Point Out Why They're Virginia Pines

November 19, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  I have a dentist appointment today at noon, and then I should work afterwards.  I’ve already told Moi that I want to take Mway for her walk this morning, but she says she wants to come along  -- she says she needs to take a walk to get in shape for deer hunting.  I wanted to familiarize myself more with the concepts of conifers, but I haven’t yet got around to it.  Moi’s getting ready to go out, so I better hurry and put on my walking clothes lest she leave without me.

State of the Path:   In the kitchen Moi hesitates trying to decide what jacket to put on (“something so I don’t look like a turkey”); inexplicably she grabs a camouflage coat.  When we look out the back door window, we see Mway, lying on the porch, looking up at us with bulging eyes.  Moi goes over to the feed bin, scatters feed for the chickens; Mway wanders into the chicken cage, and Moi yells at her (“Does she always go in there?”)  At her garden pond, I ask Moi what the evergreen trees are.  “That one over there is a wild cedar,” pointing to the far one, “and that just came up.  This other one,” next to the plum tree, “I found once while trashing with Paul.  It’s an arbor vitae.  Pyramidal arbor vitae.”  I tell her I thought the bushes in the walled garden were arbor vitae.  “No, those are boxwoods,” pointing to the ornamental bushes right behind us, but I meant the one behind them.  “That’s a, uh, evergreen of some sort.”  We take the side path, and I ask her what the evergreen is in the middle of the field here.  “That’s a wild cedar.”  I point out to her where the doe had jumped up from.  Moi goes to the far side of the hedgerow and discovers a fence post has fallen over (Hutchinson used to keep cows in his field; occasionally they would stray over onto our land, but I haven’t seen cows in the field for a long time).  At the maples, Moi stops to gaze at them.  “These are my sugar bushes,” referring to her tapping them this past spring for syrup.  We walk by the creek, cross the swale, cross the plank, round the crest of the skating pond.  Because my hands are occupied with two sticks I ask Moi to hold the Audubon tree book, but somehow it ends up in my hands again (and I end up not cracking it open the whole walk).  We stop at her pines, and I point out to her why I think they’re Virginia pines, also known as scrub pines or Jersey pines.  “Oh, okay.”  I have her touch the pricks on one of the cones, and she takes a picture of it.  She discovers another sapling coming up by one of the trees.  Moi then retraces her steps along the ridge and plows through the weeds to the edge of the marsh-like pond between the ridges to look at a cedar growing up there.  “One time,” she tells me, “I was down here with the kids, and the Boy was standing in the water here, and he called me over and said, ‘Mom, this is just beautiful.’”

State of the Creek:  I’m eager to show Moi how the big log had been swept downstream, but even before we get there, Moi stops (near the honeysuckle that’s Mway’s frequent exiting spot) and remarks that the stream bed looks wider there.  I walk back and point out to her the log that looks like it’s been buried under the creek bank.  I then show her where the ground caved in at the former log jam, and as she walks along she points out to me several other places where the ground is becoming undermined.  “Some day you’ll be walking along here, and this will all collapse out from under you.”  She stops at the pool near the big locust trees.  “This looks like it’s getting deeper.”  I look for the piece of vinyl siding, and I discover what looks like just part of it sticking out from the creek bank; the rest of it must be wedged a foot or two beneath the ground of the path.  Before we cross the swale, Moi stops me, “See these rocks here,” she points to a cascade in the creek, “The kids and I put these here one day when we were trying to build a little pool in the stream.”

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing I hand Moi the stick to throw.  She tosses it beyond the “chokeberry,” way farther than I have been throwing it.  “So these are all cedars coming up here?” I ask, looking down through the field toward the skating pond.  Moi throws the stick once or twice then wanders down through the goldenrod to look at two evergreens beyond the line of sumacs, and I end up tossing the stick for Mway the remainder of the time.  After she looks at the trees, she comes back to give her report, while I’m still throwing the stick.  “Those look like two different kinds of cedars maybe.  The one’s bushier and has cones.  The narrower one, I don’t know what’s up with that.  It has something growing on it that looks like cocoons or little balls of shit.”