Two-Days-In-One: Pro-quality Stick Cracks

August 22, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  Work all day today, and when I get home Jazz and Matt and the Boy and Jennifer are here for a cook-out to celebrate Moi’s and my 30^th wedding anniversary.  (At one point I ask Jazz how her job is going.  She says it’s going okay, and she asks me how mine is going.  Then she looks at me square in the face and says, “I’m not really sure what it is you do.”)  No opportunity for me to take Mway for a walk today.  However, while the Boy and I are out firing up the grill, we end up throwing the stick for Mway in the back yard, with Atlas trying to join in.  What happens is that I throw the stick for Mway, and both she and Altas run after it and end up playing tug-of-war with it.  Mway eventually drops her end of the stick, and I end up playing tug-of-war with Atlas to try to get the stick out of his mouth.  The Boy then takes the sides of the stick from me and starts trying to spin the big dog around in circles.  Atlas finally lets go, and as I hold Atlas by his leash, the Boy throws the stick for Mway.  He throws it high in the air, and when it lands, I hear the “pro-quality” stick (which lately has been showing signs of stress) crack.  I tell the Boy I’m trying to preserve the stick for as long as I can, so I give him Atlas to hold and take over throwing the stick, more delicately, for Mway, until she finally tires of it.

August 23, 2010.  Monday.

Situation:  Work late morning, early afternoon.  When I get home, Mway is waiting anxiously for a walk. When the Boy and I go out on a shopping errand (to buy a new car stereo I’ve been thinking about buying for a year), she runs along beside us to the car, picks up a stick she finds by the house.  I have to tell her that we’re not taking her for a walk.  When we get home, though, that’s the first thing I do.  It’s about 3:30.

State of the Path:  It’s been drizzling on and off all day, and I check the grass in the yard to see if would be dry enough to mow.  Out on the path, there are raindrops on the weeds, which are bent over and flopped down in the path, and by the time I’m wading through the grass in bug land, my boots and pants are getting a little wet, and I feel a thorn sticking in me at the upper part of my boot.  Near the beginning of the walk, as I squirm around a briar, I use the “pro-quality” stick to support myself, and it gives way a little.  When I look at it, I see it’s cracked half way through at its midpoint – I curse Atlas, whom I blame for putting too much stress on the stick.  As I approach the creek bank, I hope I see some dayflowers blooming, but all the plants that I think are dayflowers are still flowerless – perhaps it’s too shady here under the trees.  But as I’m looking over the green plants I suddenly see a spot of pink, and I realize I’m looking at the same damn plant that I’ve seen by the “chokeberries” and which I would like to believe is some sort of butterfly pea.  The leaves on this plant are bug-eaten, the flowers just as tiny, and they still do not look quite like the photo of spurred butterfly pea in the Audubon.  But seeing this plant gives me hope that I might see more of this plant, and that it might not be so insignificant, although when I look for the other plants by the “chokeberries” I don’t see them today.  Walking along the creek, I again trip over the same root I did the other day – I think it’s a root, at least it looks more like a root to me than a vine, although I can’t tell what it’s a root to.

State of the Creek:  I had forgotten how much it rained late Saturday night into Sunday morning, and I’m delighted and surprised to see the pools higher and water sitting among the rocks all along the creek, even faintly trickling here and there.  The vinyl siding is entirely submerged.  There’s even water winding its way through the wide rocky creek bed at the car tire.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, I stand in the middle and toss the stick gently into the higher goldenrod, aiming it so it will land cushioned by the weeds and maybe not break into two today.  After each fetch, I wait anxiously to see if Mway brings it back still in one piece, and I rejoin the cracked part to keep it from sagging too much.  Mway fetches it more times that I care to count; she treats the stick no more gingerly than she would any other time, growling at it and shaking it while it’s in her mouth, sometimes stepping on it as she’s spinning around and I’m trying to pick it up, and I’m amazed that, at least for today, the stick still stays together.

Wonder about Toothed, Untoothed, Leaves

August 5, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:  I have to work both tonight and this afternoon, or, as Moi would put it, as soon as I can get my ass moving.  I’m going to take Mway for a walk now.  It’s 10:21.  I already spent an hour or more online searching black chokeberries, and I’ve gathered quite a bit of information, helpful or not I don’t know: “leaves are alternate, simple, oblanceolate with crenate margins and pinnate venation; leaves have terminal glands on leaf teeth and glabrous underside.”

State of the Path:  Quick jaunt down to the creek and back.  Note two boneset plants right at the pig pen.  At the start of bug land, look again at the “black chokeberry bush,” looming over 8 feet tall.  Putting aside the question of the flowers, which I don’t remember anything about now, this plant would fit the bill for “black chokeberry,” except its leaves don’t look toothed.  Just how toothed are these leaves suppose to be?  Then when I get to the swale from bug land, where there are a lot of these bushes, I run into a bush that does have toothed leaves.  I look around me, and I see a couple of these bushes with toothed leaves, but none of them have berries, and they are surrounded by bushes with berries, but with leaves that don’t look toothed.  What am I suppose to make of this?

State of the Creek:  Though there was a brief storm last night, it didn’t put any more water into the creek.  Vinyl siding still between 2 and 3 feet away from the edge of the water.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, two small plants with big white flowers.  “Damn it,” I think, “Another plant to find the name for.”  Just one fetch – and that’s good.  Got to get my ass moving.

Take Advantage of the Boy

April 21, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  Here’s how difficult it can be to identify a bird.  Around noontime today I saw out our kitchen window a bird perching on the trumpet vine that grows up a post of our front porch (and grows through the roof by summertime).  I had a very good view of the bird and had a long enough time to observe it to go upstairs and get the Audubon bird book, leaf through its perching bird section several times, then even go find a paper and pen and jot down the color features of the bird and leaf through the Audubon again.  Here’s what I wrote down as the color features: black and white wings with brown tail feathers, brown nape and cap, black beak and a black goatee-like spot under its beak, white belly or breast with a black and white neckerchief or crest.  I found nothing in the Audubon to fit this description: no chickadee, no sparrow, no wren, no finch, no swallow, no vireo, no warbler, no thrasher – I’m even leafing through the damn book again – nothing.  What kind of bird is this?  I work tonight, and I was prepared to take Mway for a walk sometime before I leave around 3:45 pm.  But around 2:15 I hear the Boy taking Mway out the door and then in the distance the sound of her barking which means that the Boy is tossing a stick for her.  I’m going to take advantage of this – and not take Mway for a walk today.