July 16, 2010. Friday.
Situation: Last night Moi closed the bedroom door on Mway, and Mway was forced to sleep in the hall all night. This morning, Moi tells me, Mway acted very ashamed, refusing to eat, skulking around the house, and hiding for more than an hour in the bushes outside. Although Moi last night chided me for not hosing Mway down, as far as I know Moi hasn’t washed Mway either, and the dog might still stink. I have to work tonight, and I plan to take Mway for a walk sometime this afternoon. Mway lies down in the corner of the music room, and periodically throughout the morning, I can smell the stench coming from her. Finally around 11:30 I decide I need some air, and get ready to take Mway out.
State of the Path: In the walled garden, Mway sniffs a bag of trash, then wanders around, knowing there’s a ground hog somewhere around here. I take off down the path, then, thinking I don’t want her rolling in anything, call Mway to follow. She soon comes shooting down the path behind me. I sniff the air down by the wigwams, but I don’t smell any odor, although perhaps the breeze is carrying it away today. I’ve brought the Audubon along with me, and my focus is to try to identify decisively what that Queen-Anne’s-lace-like plant is. I look carefully at a specimen down near the swale from bug land, but I’m still hampered by a photo that doesn’t show what the leaves look like, and I can’t find anywhere on the plant the “one dark reddish-brown floret usually at center of umbel.” Then walking along the ridge around bug land, I see a new purple wildflower growing all over the place. I think to myself, “Damn, here’s another wildflower I won’t be able to identify,” but I throw off my gloves and start leafing through the Audubon anyway. I really despair at finding what I’m looking for, because I can’t even describe what the flower looks like, with some big bulbous thing in the middle of the tiny purple petals. But to my amazement, after a short while, I come across a photo that matches what I’m looking at exactly. It’s a photo of a heal-all. The big bulbous thing, which I think must be part of the flower, is described as the “square stem [that] has dense, cylindrical terminal spikes of purple flowers.”
State of the Creek: Hear what sounds like a bullfrog coming up from Hutchinson
The Fetch: Up at the clearing, I take my stance next to some of the Queen-Anne’s-lace type plant, and then I see right next to it something that looks very much like it – another plant, I think, that maybe really is Queen Anne’s lace, for it has an umbel, I guess you’d call it, that looks like something in the Audubon photo. I throw down my gloves and take out the book, ignoring Mway, who’s waiting for me to throw the stick. She eventually takes off, as I try to decide which plant before me is actually Queen Anne’s lace and which is something else, perhaps poisonous hemlock. I’ve also tried to look up both plants online, and have found that wikipedia states that Queen Anne’s lace is often confused with poison hemlock; I realize this is my predicament, and have yet to find a photo that will clear up my confusion. After a while, I call Mway back to the clearing. She fetches the stick twice. I think she only fetches it twice because I’ve taken her for a walk in the middle of the day, after which she won’t get a cup of food in her dish. Whatever I may have theorized before, I believe that Mway loosely associates fetching the stick with getting fed, and whenever she realizes that a walk is not at feeding time she doesn’t feel obligated to fetch the stick very many times. Back in the back yard, Mways jumps in her little wading pool to cool off, and leaves the stick crosswise on the rim, as she’s been doing the past several days. The larger pool, that’s where I’m going to jump into now.
