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.

Walk a Little Difficult Because of Big Pimple

August 2, 2010.  Monday. 

Situation:  I have work to do today sometime, and I’ll probably wait until this afternoon to take Mway for her walk.  This morning Moi tells me that she let Squeak outside for five minutes, that she bounded after a bird, and that she managed to return inside when Moi let Mway back inside.  Squeak for a long time has been afraid to go outside.  She has been watching birds attracted by the trumpet vine on our front porch through the front screen door, but if we open up the door Squeak generally leaps back in fear.  A couple weeks ago Squeak did sneak outside twice: one time she was immediately surrounded by threatening chickens and Moi had to rescue her, the second time was at night and she ended up trembling all night under the back porch.  Going outside and coming back inside this morning maybe represents a breakthrough for Squeak; maybe she’s beginning to understand how doors work, something of course that Mway understands very well.  Last night after our walk, at some point Mway slammed the bedroom door shut while I was walking past it in the hall (this is part of that stupid game that the Boy and I inadvertently taught her where after she slams the door shut then we’re supposed to leer at her through the transom window while she leaps up in anger at our leering faces -- one time while playing this game she accidentally bit the Boy in the nose).  We’ve never been able to communicate to her not to do this any more, and this action reveals to me what I do mean when I make a statement such as “who knows what goes on in that dog’s mind?”  I come back from work about 3.  I expect Moi and Mway to be taking a nap, but Moi is out painting the back porch, and Mway is running around the yard.  I decide to take Mway for her afternoon walk.  Fortunately, Moi is aware of my fondness for the “pro-quality” stick, and although she’s cleared if off the porch, I find it easily where she pitched it on the ground.

State of the Path:  I would bring the clippers with me today, but I hope to mow the lawn right after I take this walk (there’s a threat of rain), and I’m in a hurry.  The walk is made a little difficult today because I’ve developed a big pimple on the back of my thigh, caused maybe by wearing my dirty walking clothes (how often should I wash them?) but I think more likely caused by a pair of cut-off jeans I’ve been wearing around the house that are slightly too big for me and ride down my leg.  (I had Moi check the pimple to make sure it wasn’t a tick bite.)  Just down to the creek and back.  Watch out for bull thistles spared from my clippers.  Past the wigwams, where the bracken died and turned brown earlier this summer, there’s a new growth of bracken coming up.  Along the creek, there’s a thread-like growth over the jewelweed, and I wonder if it’s part of the seed system (Audubon mentions nothing about it).   More flowers are coming out on the ironweed, but still only the one plant along the path above the ridge is beginning to look truly like the photo in Audubon.

State of the Creek:  No change from yesterday evening.  The water in the pool along the narrows has receded to about a foot away from the vinyl siding.

The Fetch:  Mway fetches the stick once, then gives me the same eye she did last night.  I wave my hand with a gesture of dismissal and tell her, “Go.  Get back to the house.”

Feeling Sorry for a Briar?

July 1, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:  Damn it.  Part of my morning routine is to turn on the computer first thing so after I’m done with my walk with Mway it’s finished going through its grinding.  But this morning I forgot to click one of the opening icons and now I must sit here and listen to the computer still go through its opening procedures.  But at least I think I can use the word processing program – and, there, it sounds to me like the grinding is coming to a halt.  This morning, having gotten more detailed instructions from Moi, I better prepared Squeak’s food, nuking it in the wooden dish, her preferred dish, rather than the plastic one, which I used instead as a cover, then breaking up the food with a fork.  I let Mway out the door before I’m ready to go out; I pour water for the coffee; then I go outside, let the chickens out and throw out some feed for them.  Mway and I are on the path by 8:15.

State of the Path:  It’s a cool morning; the air feels real refreshing.  Nevertheless, I feel tired.  Last night at work when I sat down to do my job, I suddenly realized how tired I felt.  People told me I did my job just as well, if not better, than I usually do, and I was able to put passion into it, but in the back of my mind lingered a feeling of irritability which I was unable to dispel the whole night and which undoubtedly adversely affected my job performance.  Yesterday afternoon before going to work I took Mway for another walk down to the creek and then I even went into the pool to swim my circle laps – with an early morning walk, it was probably all too much to do.  Neither the day lilies nor the fleabane have opened up yet.  I take the side path by the orchard, which I hadn’t done at all yesterday.  A briar and a grapevine, in one day, have grown across the path; I don’t bother to knock them down – perhaps with all the dry weather, I’m starting to feel sorry for the plants.  Nevertheless, through the goldenrod, I step with my foot turned sideways, to act as a wedge to stamp down whatever goldenrod I can.  The weed’s hold onto the soil doesn’t seem as great as it once was, and it seems like I’m able to trample some of it down pretty well.  Down by the creek, after tripping over the loopy grapevine as I do almost every time (the vine is hidden by some of those plants I talked about yesterday and can’t identify), I run into an especially prickly thistle – this, if it is a thistle (and since it’s not flowering I can’t for certain tell), may be a bull thistle.  Moi calls all the thistles Canadian bull thistles; but Audubon makes a distinction between Canada thistle and bull thistle:  both are spiny, but the bull thistle is “our spiniest thistle.”  I take the side path along the skating pond too.  I notice that there are catty-nine-tails (Audubon calls them common cattails) in the pond, and this amazes me, because I can’t imagine there’s any water in the pond to sustain these plants.  I think about going over to investigate things further, but between the path and the crest of the pond lies a bunch of goldenrod, and I just can’t stand the thought of walking through more of this stuff.

State of the Creek:  To my surprise, Mway doesn’t head into the creek at her usual spot, but simply turns right onto the path; I think maybe she’s deliberately trying to avoid any contact with the raccoons.  On our way along the creek, we both prick our ears at something suddenly crashing through the weeds on the other side.  This sounds again to me like a deer, but neither of us see anything.  I see that the pool under the black walnut tree is starting to disappear; the same is true of one of the pools along the crest of the skating pond.  Tomorrow or the next day, both of these pools might be gone.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, Mway is a ball of energy, going after the “pro-quality” stick more times, really, than I care to throw it – again, my muscles, particularly my thigh muscles, feel sore (too many frog kicks in the swimming pool, I believe), and it’s unpleasant for me to bend down to pick up the stick.  At one point, after Mway drops the stick at my feet, I just stand there hesitating to bend down, and Mway barks away at full throttle, the force from her abdomen kicking her body back and forth like a cannon discharging.  Up at the house, I hear the chickens crowing, and a sound of a crash like they’re up on the porch knocking something over.  I feel the urge to boot Mway --  but, of course, I don’t.  Eventually I bend down, throw the stick a few more times; we play “Put it down” till she grows tired of it herself, then head back to the house.