Almost Get a Pair of New Boots

October 21, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:  This morning Moi goes to a Mennonite store, says she can pick me up a new pair of good-quality rubber boots.  When she gets there, she phones to tell me they don’t have any size 10.  When I checked my shoe size on my old boots, I saw they were made in USA.  “Must’ve been one of those products Wal-Mart told the manufacturers to make real cheap,” Moi says.  “The boots at the Mennonite store are made in China now.  Maybe that’s all you can get these days.”  She tells me she’s seen some boots at a discount store that’s along a route I frequent, so I’ll try to stop in there sometime soon.  I have to work tonight.  I was just getting ready to take Mway for a walk, but Moi and Mway have just gone for a nap – I’ll have to wait till a little later.  I go to lie down – fall asleep, when I wake up, it’s twenty minutes later than the time I wanted to take Mway for a walk.  Have to rush now.

State of the Path:  Set the sticks against a small hemlock near the pig pen to pee.  A vine twines up it, its still green leaves ovoid with a distinctive tip, just one of the many plants I haven’t been able, or haven’t even tried, to identify.  Look at what I used to think of as pin oaks, see a second small tree near the one I walk under, now I think of them as black oaks.  At the narrows, a branch from a big locust has fallen across the path, must step over it.  I cross the plank without thinking too much about it.  Look at what I used to think of as black oaks, now think of them as pin oaks, the leaves maybe really do look different.  Don’t see any New England or New York asters – maybe they’re gone now.   Boneset gray like gray goldenrod, the latter growing everywhere more fuzzy. 

State of the Creek:  At log jam, note grasses in the water turning brown to black.  Much of stream looks black, from rotting vegetation.  Up by car tire, water getting low, filled with pin oak leaves.

The Fetch:  Mway and I continue trampling down the goldenrod, I intentionally, she accidentally.  Mway seems to really like the long crooked stick, maybe because of all the sticks we’ve used its most like the jointed leg of an animal.  Before I say “that’s enough,” I even get swept away by Mway’s enthusiasm, a couple times taking the stick by its jointed end and spinning it around several times like a baton or a lasso, feeling like the Boy, a young man, enjoying the physicality of what I’m doing, for a brief moment.

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.

Where's the Stick?

January 16, 2010.  Saturday.

Situation:  This morning Moi was out early, and I was out in the morning too doing errands.  She gets home about 2, and since we’re both working tonight, I decide to take Mway out then.  Mway’s already down by the door as I’m suiting up.  Again, Moi comments that I don’t need a snow suit today; but I put it on just the same for the reasons I’ve mentioned already.

State of the Path:  I hear crows as soon as I step out on the back porch.  The snow is pretty much gone.  The only patches of ice I see are down around bug land, one or two across the path, and the rest within bug land itself.   The ground is still hard, but the surface has thawed a bit, and it is starting to get muddy, especially down the center of the path where Mway treads the most and around in bugland.   The weeds are as flat as I’ve seen this year, and I keep hearing various birds the whole length of the walk.

State of the Creek:  The ice in the creek has melted even more today; every where there’s rocks the water is flowing with ice crystals only around the banks.  Some places the ice has receded allowing a channel of water to flow down the middle of the creek.  Other places the ice is still thick, too thick to poke through with my walking stick, and here the water is puddling on top of the ice or flowing slowly over the top of it.

The Fetch:  Again, only two fetches today.  I have a theory that, since lately I’ve been taking Mway out before supper time and not filling her dish immediately after her walk, that maybe she feels she doesn’t have to work too hard at fetching her stick.  As she runs past me after her second fetch with the stick in her mouth, she gives me a look that seems to say “This is all I’m doing now.  You going to do anything about it?”   Back in the back yard, as I’m approaching the porch, I see Mway’s run off to the side of the house and doesn’t have her stick anymore.  I suspect that she senses the fat ground hog that I saw earlier out the kitchen window mosing around the side yard.  Before I go into the house, though, I want her to bring the stick to the back door so I can use it again.  I shout out “Where’s your stick, Mway?  Where’s the damn stick?”  It takes her a while -- she sniffs first at one that wasn’t the one we used -- but she finds it where she dropped it in the side yard, carries it up to the house, and drops it at the back door.