July 29, 2010. Thursday.
Situation: We got back from NYC yesterday afternoon, about 3:15, a little less than an hour before I had to leave for work. Since we’d just driven some 200 miles in an un-air-conditioned car, my first priority was to hop into the pool to cool off. So while Moi talked to Barb about our trip, I slipped on my swimming trunks and got in the water, spending my time largely skimming off dead bugs from the surface of the water, since we left the filter off during the trip as it’s been making a whining noise. Mway followed me out the door, heading toward the path and looking over her shoulder, only to be disappointed when I stopped far short of the path and started climbing up the pool ladder. This morning Moi has left for three days of out-of-town work. It has just been raining, but right now, about 9:10, it looks like it’s clearing up. I know Moi has fed Mway, but the dog’s been keeping close by my side. I have to work today, and I know the path will be soaking wet, but right now I’m going to put on my walking clothes and take her out.
State of the Path: I find the “pro-quality” stick under the bench where I had stored it (I didn’t want Barb using it, lest she might lose it). Thankfully I had clipped many of the weeds in the main path, or I would get more soaked than I do (as it is I don’t start getting really wet until I hit the red willows and the area over the ridge). Some of the goldenrod leaning into the path is very strongly anchored in the ground, and the best I can do as I’m walking along is bend the stem in half. The same brambles that have been clutching at me lately grab my shoulder again today. The stands of jewelweed that have survived the hot dry weather, particularly below the maples at the edge of bug land and along the creek, seem to look hearty today. (On our trip to NYC, I found myself gazing at the wild flowers along Interstate XX, seeing fringed loosestrife and common mullein; outside our hotel in Queens, Moi identified lamb’s quarters in the cracks at the street curb.) I look again at the still unnamed purple wildflowers in bug land (I told Moi about them but she hasn’t yet had the chance to look at them); on the way to the strawberry field I see a specimen growing along the path there, whose flowers have opened up more than the plants down at bug land, and so look less like a thistle and more like the outspreading flowers of knapweed. Unfortunately Audubon only lists the spotted knapweed, whose flowers are pink, but it seems to me I remember finding a purple knapweed online, which someone called common knapweed; with the evidence before me I’m beginning to think that this plant is at least some kind of knapweed – no, I want to correct myself: looking through Audubon just now I recheck the photo for tall ironweed. With the plant I just saw today, I see that these purple wildflowers are looking more and more like that photo. The photo is deceptive: the flowers look much bigger than the quarter inch heads mentioned in the commentary; the leaves are blurry, but they look like what I see, long, thin, lanceolate, pointed. I do believe I’ve made a definitive identification: tall ironweed (“tall erect stem bears deep purple-blue flower heads in loose terminal clusters,” “bracts beneath flower head blunt-tipped,” “Height: 3 – 7’.”
State of the Creek: Beyond the multiflora beneath the tree stand, I’m surprised the water is not gushing over the rocks after the rain. I almost stick my head in a cob web, which I belatedly see strewn with rain drops. The water covers about three quarters of the vinyl siding.
The Fetch: Mway seems rusty at first, but maybe it’s because I first stand in a new location in the clearing, but after a while she warms up and fetches the stick more times than I bother to count and plays “Put it down” about five times. On the way back to the house, she has to stop to readjust her mouth grip on the stick, as it gets knocked out of her mouth by the firm weeds along the path.
Addendum: After I finish work, I take Mway for a second walk, about 4:30, the first afternoon walk I believe I’ve taken her for for a while, because it has simply been too hot. But I also want to do some clipping. First I have to do Moi’s evening chores: feed chickens, gather the two eggs I find. I also turn on the pool and clean out the filter basket; in addition to the leaves and dead bugs I usually find in there, I uncover a drowned bird (a starling?). The chickens, who have gathered around me to eat any bugs I might dump on the ground, start pecking at the dead bird when I toss it under the lilacs. Out on the path, I trim along part of what I had clipped before, and then I bend forward in earnest on the way toward the clearing, chopping down goldenrod, sumac saplings, and any briars sticking in the way. Mway follows slowly behind me, in anticipation, I believe, that we’re heading immediately to the clearing to toss stick. But I throw her for a loop by turning around suddenly and heading toward the creek. I do some more rigorous clipping through the red willows and beyond the ridge, trying not to chop down any plants that I think might be promising new wildflowers, but of course I have no strict criteria to follow, so I have no idea really what I might have spared or not. I’m a little disconcerted when, after chopping down a row of goldenrod, I find suddenly revealed a lot of hearty poison ivy plants close to the ground, and I try to clip off the tops of these as best as my waning energy will allow me. Up at the clearing, finally, I expect Mway to fetch the stick many times. Moi mentioned to me a couple days ago that she has discovered that Mway will not eat her food if she has not taken her out to fetch stick beforehand. This observation confirms to me that Mway associates food and fetching, that the one is the just reward, or just wage, for the other. So I’m surprised when Mway only fetches the stick once. But things could be more complicated. Mway has perhaps become accustomed to me taking her for a walk between feedings, an extra walk, as it were, which does not require her to fetch the stick many times. Moi has said that if Mway does something twice it becomes a rule. And Mway perhaps had no idea that when we got to the house I would dish out some food for her; but I have no idea, really, what goes on in the dog’s mind.
