Bring Along the Clippers Again

August 7, 2010.  Saturday.

Situation:  Moi tells me that the trumpet-like flowers are morning glories.  I believe her, even though I don’t find exactly what I see in Audubon; the photos the book shows of flowers in the morning glory family are close enough, and I’m content enough to call it a morning glory, although, except for the pinkish flowers, the entry for hedge bindweed better fits the bill: “leaves arrow-shaped or triangular” rather than “heart-shaped,” “a pest, twining among and engulfing desirable ornamentals,” so I suppose I should be equally content to call it bindweed.  The other flower Moi says is comfrey, which she planted herself there quite a few years ago.  Moi and I both work tonight; I have to go into town this morning; not quite sure when I’ll fit in a walk with Mway.  Back from my errand; I decide I might as well take Mway out now, at 11:27.  Moi is out painting the house; she feels compelled to distract me with every little detail: “I’ve just painted the trim on the two bottom windows.  If I wasn’t afraid to go up on the ladder….”  I bring along the clippers; it’s a cool, nonhumid day.

State of the Path:   I decide not to do any reclipping on the main path, just finish up on the side paths what I didn’t do the other week.  I snip an obtruding briar or goldenrod stem or two along the old orchard, but I don’t hunker down until I pass the maple tree and set to work on clipping the 20-foot swatch of goldenrod I hadn’t gotten to before.  End up clipping some dogbane and a little of the jewelweed too, though I try to keep most of the latter standing.  One thing I have to be mindful of is where I set my stick; walking back along the path, and clipping here and there whatever I might have missed, I think for a moment I lost the stick.  Fortunately, the “pro-quality” stick is big and conspicuous, and the weeds not as thick this year as they usually are, so I do find it where I left it.  Down at bug land, I stare again for a moment at the big “chokeberry” bush; then I spy two ripe blackberries, which I pick and eat to quench my thirst.  The path along the creek isn’t in dire need of clipping, so I head quickly to the side path along the skating pond.  Mind where I set my stick.  After the second honeysuckle bush, I find that the goldenrod is not too thick, so I just round the bend and gather up my stick.  Up beyond the ridge, I find another ripe blackberry to quench my thirst with.

State of the Creek:  The water at the tree stand is just a puddle beneath the big maple tree.  The pools at the black walnut tree and the big locusts have completely dried up.  See a frog leap into fresh mud.  The vinyl siding is nearly 4 feet away from what is now a pathetic puddle along the narrows.  The creek bed at the car tire is completely dry.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, Mway starts rolling in something, and I have to yell at her, “Don’t roll in that.”  To my surprise again, Mway starts fetching the stick more times than I care to count, and even forces me to play “Put it down” four or five times.  I stand in the middle of the clearing and toss the stick very lackadaisically, like I’m tossing sticks aside.  Looking around, I see that what Mway had been rolling in is a dead baby starling or something.  Back at the porch, Mway stands at the door without the stick in front of her.  “Where’d you put the stick?” I have to ask her.  While I’m looking for it around the porch, she runs past the swimming pool, as if she knows definitely that she dropped it way back there, but she comes running back empty mouthed.  I walk down the stoop, resigned to having to look for it all around the yard, Mway heading out again in front of me, but before she does I soon see the stick athwart her little wading pool.  As I bend down to pick it up, she suddenly spies it, snatches it up before I can reach it, and carries it back to the door.

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.