Happy for Areas of Shade

May 30, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  As usual work all day today, and when I get home, about 6:30, it’s still light out.  Moi tells me that today, while clearing weeds around the pool, she encountered a garter snake eating a frog.  She slammed the snake with a shovel, and apparently both animals sped away, each still alive.  When I go to put on my walking gloves, I can’t find them; Moi tells me that she threw them away, and the pair of gardening gloves still remaining on the hutch are mine to use.  Instead of the “pro-quality” stick, I bring along a stick I spied under the lilac bushes while I was getting out of the car.  Lying in front of a burdock with leaves the size of TV trays, the stick looked like a decent one, and I wanted to remove it from near the driveway.

State of the Path:  Although it’s a pleasant early evening, I decide to stick to the main path, particularly when I look down the side path and see the late afternoon sun shining down hard on it.   Past the sumacs, the sun is beating down on the main path too, and I’m happy when I reach the shade under the maples.  I realize that I’m soon going to have to bring clippers again along on a walk.  The honeysuckles in particular, done now with their flowering, seem to be putting all their life into growing their branches, and at the sumacs, and at other places, they are seriously starting to obstruct the path.

State of the Creek:  It’s shady down along the creek too.  Without the sun shining down on it, the creekwater looks almost green, especially where the multiflora shrubs arch over it, or where there’s moss, or whatever, growing among the bottom rocks.

The Fetch:  When I get up to the clearing, the sun is blazing again.  Instead of standing and waiting for me, as she usually does, Mway is wandering through the goldenrod at the clearing’s edge.  Here the plants are that high that Mway can’t be seen: I hear the swish of the weeds, see nothing but the swaying plants.  Soon, though, Mway clears the weeds and runs over to spin around at my feet as I’m readying to toss the stick, the only spot in the clearing where the weeds are being kept down.  She fetches the lilac stick more times than I care to count.  Back in the back yard, I look at the newly unveiled pool water; although it’s green with algae, Moi says it’s okay to go in, and I think that’s what I’m going to do now.

Slip on Some Mud

January 19, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  Today I work in the late morning and early afternoon.  Before going to work, while sitting at my computer between 8:30 and 9:00, I hear Moi walking from the bathroom to her bedroom and Mway out in the hall barking for her walk.  Mway used to bark at me in the afternoons too, but over the years perhaps I’ve yelled at her so much about that, that lately I haven’t heard any noises out of her as she’s waiting for her walk except loud huffs and pants of excitements and maybe a squeal or an occasional squeaky yawn.  I get home from work before 3, but Mway and Moi are napping, so I go into my room to read and rest.  But no sooner do I do so than I hear them walking around outside my door, and then there is a phone call for me (from of all people, the Sun-Gazette).  Since I’m up I take Mway out around 3:30.

State of the Path:  Though she doesn’t bark as she’s waiting for me to suit up, as soon as I open the door, Mway dashes off the porch and runs down the sidewalk to the chicken pen to bark at the chickens.  Today, though, the chickens have already retreated from their pen and gone into the coop, and Mway, slightly disappointed, can do nothing but sniff at the coop door.  As we round the corner and pass by the pig pen, she also starts snooping around that and eventually ventures into the door.   By the time, I reach the sumacs, though, she is back on the path and following me toward the creek.  Even though there is no snow or ice on the ground, I have brought my walking stick with me, and I’m glad that I have, because now the mud is slippery, and down by the wigwam, where run-off water tends to stream together before entering bug land, I actually slip on some mud and almost fall, only catching my balance thanks to the walking stick.  Beneath the mud, the ground is still frozen, but thawing, and at places where I step I feel the ground give way with a crunch.  Mway reaches the creek before I do, and I see her taking off on the path along the creek, sniffing at the ground a lot as she does so.  As I leave the path along the creek and step on the plank that crosses the drainage stream of bug land, then come into the area of the red willow shrubs, I see that the ground there is especially porous and seems to be giving way and eroding at places.  I take the side path along the skating pond, using the foot holds I made yesterday, but with some difficulty, as the mud there is slippery too.

State of the Creek:  The water is a little lower today, and it’s starting to lose its greenish gray color and turn browner.   More of the ice is gone; the berg that I spotted at the bend yesterday has melted away, but a little farther down I spot some clear planks of ice sitting on top of the grass of a wash-out area, and then, looking very carefully, I spot a whole shelf of ice resting against the bank underneath the oaks.  I almost don’t see it because it is brown with mud and silt, and almost looks like an area of dirt.  But with my walking stick, I can make the whole thing bob up and down in the water.

The Fetch:  On the other side of the ridge around bug land, as you head to the clearing, there is a low, run-off area that is getting wetter and wetter each day, and because of the way the water and the brambles lay, when I’ve been walking here, I’ve been forced to step for the past few weeks on a huge ant hill that is slowly getting quite squashed.  Mway is already waiting for me as I arrive at the clearing, and she starts spinning around in circles as she waits me for me to position myself to throw the stick.  I throw it once toward the exit of the clearing, just short of the briars so she doesn’t get tangled in them.  She brings the stick back, spins around and barks, and next I throw it toward the electric pole, well within the clearing.   She dashes off after it, brings it back, and again drops it at my feet, spinning around and barking.  This is fetch number two, I think to myself, and again I throw the stick toward the pole, expecting perhaps that we’ll go on with quite a few fetches today.  But as she’s running back with the stick in her mouth this time, she swerves away from me and goes dashing off up the path through the briars back toward the house.  She is already at the back door, and has dropped the stick on the back porch, when I come trudging into the back yard.