What to Make of All These Vines

August 21, 2010.  Saturday.

Situation:  Yesterday while I was leafing through the Audubon, trying to identify the little pink flowers, I came upon an entry for kudzu vine, and the name rang a bell.  I think this is the name Moi once called all the vines I’ve been calling, rather informally, grape vines; and indeed the leaves in the photo look a lot like what I see growing all around, climbing up trees, clambering over bushes, and sprawling into the goldenrod.  So far this year I’ve yet to see any flowers on this vine, but Audubon says this vine “rarely flowers north of Virginia,” which is encouraging evidence.  By the way Audubon describes the flower of the kudzu vine as “pea-like” and ovoid, and I think this kind of describes the little pink flower I was looking at yesterday: I bet it’s some kind of pea, but I hesitate yet to select any of the examples I see in the book.   Forget what I’ve been saying.  I just asked Moi if she once called those vines kudzu vines; “No, no,” she replied, “I know what kudzu vines are.  We don’t have any.”  “What do you call those vines out there?” I ask.  “Monkey vines,” she says, “Look it up on the computer, if that’s what you call them somebody else will call them that.  Monkey vine, or wild grape vine.”   After awhile, Moi takes me out to the chicken coop where she thinks there might be a kudzu vine growing.  It turns out to be, as even Moi realizes, just a young pokeweed.  But out there we discover another new blue wildflower growing along the coop, with spiked, enfolded leaves.  I’m excited about it because it reminds me of the plants I’ve seen growing along the creek since spring, albeit without flowers (and which I thought might be some kind of grass), and I’m thinking this might be the same thing.  I manage to find a photo in Audubon that looks like what we’re looking at: Asiatic dayflower; and I think this is that or some sort of related dayflower, like the slender dayflower (no photo of that).  These flowers, like the name indicates, only bloom for a day, and I’m anxious to go down to the creek to see what I may find. Moi and I go to the side of the house, where there happens to be a wild grape vine; Moi has said that we seldom see grapes on these vines, but as we’re looking at this one, we see one grape-like berry hanging.  Right now, Moi and Mway have gone to the bedroom to take a nap.  Moi has asked me to chop down some weeds along the house so she can put up a ladder to paint; that’s going to take a lot of work, and then I’ll want to take Mway for a walk afterward (taking the Audubon with me).  So I’m waiting for them to get up from their naps, then I’ll do all that, before going to work with Moi tonight.

State of the Path:  By the time I get done cutting down what is mostly vines (including some poison ivy climbing up the foundation), it’s 3:30, and Mway and I set off on the path.  We have wild grape vines all over the place, but they are most predominant along the old orchard.  Indeed today I note a wild grape vine covering a small black walnut that has leaves the size of dinner plates.  Past the two anthills and just before the boxelders, there are a number of swingable monkey vines; if I haven’t mentioned this before, the path cuts through two monkey vines that form a kind of portal that you have to step through every time you come this way.  If I haven’t mentioned this before, I’m amazed by that, because this is one of my favorite things along the path.  Down by the creek, my hopes build as I approach the stream bank looking for dayflowers, but although I see a lot of the plants that I think are dayflowers (some of it scraggly from the heat), I don’t see one flower. I do see a mushroom, and I wish I knew what kind it was because I’d love to eat it.  Coming up from the swale through the “chokeberries,” my eye falls on the little pink flower.  I try not to think about it, when a couple feet beyond, I spot a second plant of the same thing.  So I whip off my gloves and open up the Audubon, and turn over the tiny little pink flowers, careful not to touch the poison ivy around it.  I really would like to say that these are spurred butterfly peas (the leaves look like the leaves in the photo for just plain butterfly peas).  The flowers look like they’re turned upside down like they’re supposed to be – at least I can’t tell which way is up and which way is down, but the flowers are so tiny, only maybe ¼ inch compared to the ¾ to 1 and ½ inches stated by Audubon.

State of the Creek:  The puddle under the black walnut tree is gone.  Vinyl siding about three feet away from the edge of the water.

The Fetch:  I really don’t feel like tossing the stick today, and I’m relieved when Mway makes only about four fetches.

Realize Mway Is, After All, Conscious

August 1, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  Work all day today, and when I come back, about 6:30, I say to Moi, “I suppose Mway wants to go for a walk.”  Moi, relaxing on the sofa, says, “Yeah, she can go on a walk.  But I’ve fed her already.”  Mway is excited that I’ve come home, and I see her scoot into the music room, as if that’s a waiting room where she can sit for a while preliminary to going for a walk with me.  I go upstairs to take off my work clothes (for the summer, a pair of dress slacks, loafers, and the Hawaiian shirt Jazz bought for me at a Wal-Mart on her honeymoon in Hawaii) and put on my walking clothes.  When I come back downstairs, Mway shoots out of the music room, and, while I’m putting on my boots, garden gloves, and safari helmet, circles the kitchen table a couple times.  I have an inkling of a realization, seeing this, that, while Mway certainly associates taking a walk and fetching stick as work connected to her getting fed, to a large extent she likes to go for a walk simply for the sake of going for a walk.

State of the Path:  At the outbuilding, Mway raises her snout in the air as if she sees something in the building, but I look toward the upstairs window and see nothing.  Out on the path, I’m certainly glad that I clipped down some of the weeds these past few days, for while I still wouldn’t want to walk on this path in shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt, it definitely is a lot easier walking now.  I see that it wouldn’t hurt, though, to do another round of clipping, especially to cut back some of the grasses that I missed.  Under the pin oaks, where the ground looks like an autumn scene, looks to me like one of Hutchinson’s no-trespassing signs is lying on the ground.  The elderberries have ripened and turned purple, but they are not as copious as I’ve seen them in some past years.  I realize I haven’t been tripping over the loopy vine down by the creek; it seems to me it moved to the left a foot or two.  Just beyond it is the bull thistle, which I do have to keep my eyes open for, and just beyond the bull thistle are the few flowers of fringed loosestrife.  When I pass through the red willows into bug land, the sun is shining bright for a moment on this otherwise cloudy day.  I walk over to the biggest tall ironweed; its flowers are still not opening as far they might, and the center flowers are now dried up.  Up on the way to the strawberry patch is another tall ironweed plant, which has one flower that looks like the flowers shown in the photo in Aububon.

State of the Creek:  It was supposed to rain today, but it hasn’t, and the creek is losing more water.  The bed is dry underneath the big locusts; the water at the log jam is reduced to a puddle; the vinyl siding is completely dry, and it looks like there’s moss on it.  The creek has become a group of disconnected pools of water as it was before.

The Fetch:   I toss the stick once for Mway.  She runs after it, picks it up, then comes running back to me, with the long stick waving in her mouth.  I realize, as she’s eyeing me and looking for a sign from me, that, if I told her to put it down, she would.  She might prefer just to fetch the stick once and head back to the house (and I do nod and indicate to her that she can keep on running with the stick in her mouth), but she’s willing to put aside her desire and mold her actions to what she interprets to be my own desire, if I so communicate it to her.  And I realize at that moment that statements that I’ve made in the past such as “who knows what goes on in that dog’s mind” are, if interpreted in a certain way, totally inappropriate and unthinking on my part, because what goes on in her mind is no more predictable or knowable than what goes on in Moi’s mind, or my own mind – that what goes on in there is always open to negotiation, open to communication, open to what is going on in other minds, as it would be for Moi or me, that Mway is not just a concatenation of reflexes running on instinct, but is, after all, conscious, aware of a future of possibilities, if limited in scope and number.  On the way back to the house, I see that Mway, who had run way ahead of me, has dropped the stick along the path, apparently drawn away from carrying it back to the porch by another possibility that presented itself.  I pick the stick up, and when I reach the yard, Mway growls slightly, grapples the stick out of my hand, and resumes carrying it to the porch.

Charge Down the Path, Looking at Nothing

July 2, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  Last night I had a rough time at work, a fight with a co-worker (Wade), and afterwards I fell asleep in front of the TV, slipping in and out of consciousness, and not going upstairs to bed until the Colbert Report was running a second time.  So I was surprised when I woke up – I wasn’t sure when, because the clock in my room had stopped, but I can tell from the clock on my computer now that it must’ve been before 8 o’clock.  Squeak turns up her nose at the canned cat food I give her, but then I see that the dish tower containing her dried cat food, which is her main food, is empty; fortunately, I bought more cat food yesterday, and I’m able to refill it.  Outside, while I’m letting out the chickens and throwing feed on the ground for them, then wondering whether or not the pool filter needs back flushing (something Moi usually does), Mway starts to get impatient.  When I pick up the stick from the porch, she starts leaping and gamboling around the yard, expecting me to throw it there (as I did yesterday afternoon before going to work), and she ends up knocking over the chickens’ water dish.

State of the Path:  I vaguely look over at the day lilies – the flowers weren’t open, but – I can’t remember now – it seems that the spot they are in was awfully shady and the flowers were dried up (looking out my office window now, I see that the day lilies by the summer house still have not opened up this early in the morning).  Without thinking too much about it, I head straight down the main path, my mind a blur amidst all the plants with their various leaves criss-crossing this way and that.  I do notice the Canada thistles in the middle of the field, and reflect on how they’re doing their best to find a place to grow and blossom among so much goldenrod.  Down at the seeps of bug land, it seems to me that the grasses are a bit bedraggled – but, I don’t know, this is just a vague impression I have now in thinking about it.   Other than this, I more or less just charge down the path, looking at nothing and thinking of nothing except getting to the clearing as quickly as possible.

State of the Creek:  I do take some time, however, to look fairly closely at the creek.   When we arrive at the tree stand, Mway, instead of heading to the creek like she has so many times in the past, simply turns right onto the path, just like she did yesterday.  I step forward to look at the creek, and I see why she didn’t go down to it – all the water below the tree stand is gone, the pool has dried up, a fact Mway must have discovered two days ago.  I start checking on each pool of water.  There is still a little water sitting in the creek bed at the log jam, but the next pool of water, below the black walnut tree, is also dry.  So that’s two fewer pools of water than a couple days ago.  Below the big trees, where the creek bends, the double pool of water still has water in it.  I then go over to the crest of the skating pond; the pool of water below the swale from bug land is still there, but its lower half has completely dried.  While I’m there at the skating pond, I brace myself to step through the goldenrod to check on the cattails – that’s surely what they are, with their “brownish cylinder of female flowers” (as described by Audubon) sticking up.  I wonder if there’s any water in the pond.  I doubt it very much, but I don’t bother to step into it to check.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, I see that the spot where I’ve been standing to toss the stick is very well trampled down, showing nothing but brown grass and a few remaining stems of smashed- down goldenrod, so I take my stance at another spot.  My muscles are not sore today, probably because I took a break from swimming yesterday, but I still don’t feel much like throwing the stick, and Mway has me throwing it many more times than I care to.  Between throws, I try to take in the vista from the clearing:  I look down at the cattails in the skating pond, which look very striking from here, and I look around at the red berries that appear very bright these days on the sumacs.  But before I can look very long at something, Mway arrives back with the stick, ready for the next toss.  After many tosses, she starts playing “Put it down,” and she does this a lot, showing no signs of quitting.  Finally I have to simply turn around and start heading back to the house.