Sunday Before Labor Day

September 5, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  I work all day today, and afterwards I’m going to a Labor Day party.  Mway will just have to wait till tomorrow for me to take her for a walk.

Check Out Dump Mound

September 3, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  Every Friday night so far this year, I’ve had work; but I’ve lost my regular Friday job, so no work tonight.  To illustrate what I was saying about my wage above, I’ve calculated my net earnings for certain nights.  On a Thursday night I get five Jacksons for what’s ostensibly three hours of work, but if you add in set up, break down, and driving time, that comes to about six hours of work.  Add two more hours of preparatory work as I’ve talked about, and the total comes to eight hours.  Figure the allowance for mileage that the federal government permits (it varies from year to year, but has been around $.50 per mile the last couple years) – that’s $.50 times 66 miles, or $33.  Subtract that from five Jacksons, and divide by 8, and you get an hourly net wage of about $8.37.  That’s admittedly slightly above the minimum wage, but my Sunday work fares far worse.  There my gross is only three Jacksons and three Washingtons.  Subtract the mileage allowance of $40 ($.50 times 80 miles) and divide by 8 hours of total work (which in this case doesn’t include any preparatory work that I might do, say, on Saturday), and the hourly wage comes to about $2.87.  This is for work that calls for much training and supposedly requires rare, if not unique, skills.  And this work doesn’t carry any benefits – no health, worker’s compensation, or unemployment insurance, no 401(k) plan.  Admittedly, I do get free meals (part of which I most often box up and have as a second or third meal during the week) and, on Thursday, two glasses of merlot and, Sundays, all the apricot wheat beer I dare drink.  Last night, I also learned that the Thursday job, which was once weekly, and reduced to every other week for the last couple months, will continue every other week into the fall.  Fortunately, to make up for the lost work on Friday nights, I have some work I can do during the day today.  This is for an entirely different kind of job, which, by the way, requires little more than an attention span, and at which I can some times make $100 an hour.  Early this morning our new refrigerator, which was the first we’ve ever had to buy, was delivered.  I caught Moi staring at it with – what? – I guess, with the delight one stares at a new purchase, or perhaps she’s just admiring the change of color, black with an industrial gray door, which sort of matches the gray-green and black-green of our cabinets and countertops.  She’s consecrated the appliance with four magnets: one in the shape of a fiddle, another which is a watermelon wedge wearing sunglasses, the third a plaque of Mt. Rushmore with the faces of four Indian leaders looming in the clouds above, and the fourth showing a cartoon dog next to the saying “Love me, love my dog.”  I work most of the afternoon, getting back about 4:30; Mway is waiting for her walk.  But after I put on my boots, helmet, and gloves, she twists her head and looks up at me with a quizzical look, as if to ask “Are we really going for a walk now?”

State of the Path:  Perhaps she was wondering if I was going out to mow the lawn instead, which indeed I had been thinking of doing – and it’s about a week since I mowed it last, a rhythm Mway might be attuned to, and the grass is at a height at which I usually mow it.  But, since the place Moi and I usually work at Saturday nights is closed for the weekend, I decide to postpone any mowing until at least tomorrow.  My eyes fall upon the outbuilding and on what once was a rabbit hutch attached to it.  Inside it now, for years, there’s been nothing but jars; on top of it is a cow skull, against its legs is a basketball backboard for the kids which we never put up, and beneath it are several plastic wastebaskets lying on their side and a shredded plastic snow sled that Moi might actually use to haul things around.  Before the walled garden, I note the “chokeberry” bush, now bearing purple berries, and next to it what once used to be a belligerent multiflora bush, now nothing but dead branches, starting to get covered over with wild grape vines.  I take a pee in the walled garden, and when I turn around, nearly step on a big pile of turds Mway has left in the path.  I start to go straight to the creek, but Mway turns on the side path, and I decide to follow her.  Just before the monkey vine portal, Mway turns left onto the faint path that I thought might have been made by the neighbor kids, and I follow her there too.  It leads to the dump mound – a pile of dirt, which was here when we first bought the house, out of which sticks a wash tub and some sheets of rubber.  There’s several big animal holes dug into it.  Hiding it from the sight of the neighbors on one side is a bush with red berries (is it the same as the bushes I’ve lately noticed in bug land?), and a couple trees down is the Boy’s tumbling down fort.  This is indeed a cozy and a “cool” place for kids to play in, I think.  Near the monkey vine portal is the same bush with red berries.  Lots of bumblebees again, brown little butterflies, monarchs (or viceroys), that same butterfly that kind of looks like a cecropia moth (is that the right name?), and a spindly bug that I think for a moment is a mosquito, but I’m sure is something else.  Down by the creek, I note for the first time how much jewelweed is growing in bug land, among the grasses now turning brown.  As I’m walking along looking at it, I just in time catch myself before I take another step and fall over the creek bank.  Coming along the ridge, I see that the red-berried bushes here have different kinds of leaves than the bushes near the dump mound – maybe I’ll have time to try to identify all these things this weekend.

State of the Creek:  Mway goes into the water below the tree stand.  She gets out somewhere and runs ahead of me, and at the big locusts, I see her standing on the creek at the narrows looking over to the other side.  From where I view her I can see the big cavity under the path that Moi worried about earlier this year.  When I catch up to Mway, she suddenly leaps across the creek after what may be a rabbit, which dashes for cover into the dead branches of a multiflora bush surrounding the big oak that rises above the big clod of sod along the creek.

The Fetch:  More fetches than I care to toss.  Mway seems to still have a little bit of a squeal to her bark, and she seems to be snorting a lot from plowing through the goldenrod after the stick.  Going back to the house, Mway finally manages to pass me near the walled garden, just before her pile of turds which she willy-nilly steps on.

No Time to Identify New Pink Flowers, New Red Berries

September 2, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:  Work tonight, and find it most convenient to take Mway for her walk around noon.  Mway, lying under the kitchen table, doesn’t expect a walk at this odd hour, but when I open the door, she bolts toward it.

State of the Path:  I think the goldenrod is close to, if not at, its peak, with nearly every stem spiking up yellow (though at the clearing I realize most of the goldenrod around there is still green); the same I’d say is true of the touch-me-nots, though I’ve yet to find an exploding seed pod.  I discover a new little pink, clover-like wildflower by the wigwams (and maybe the same down by the creek) – no time today to try to figure out what this is.  I cross the feed channel, wary of a bumblebee climbing on a boneset blossom.  There are a couple new flowers on the aster, though the plant’s having a rough time of it in the dry dirt of the ditch.  In bug land there’s a bush now bearing red berries – no time to figure out what this is either.  As I approach the break in the ridge, I hear what sounds like a cough, and Mway comes bolting from the ridge and starts running along it after something – don’t know what it is, and she loses track of it.

State of the Creek:  No change, as far as I can tell, in the creek.

The Fetch:  More fetches than I care to deal with, in what’s still hot and humid weather.  Mway’s bark today sounds like a piggish squeal; maybe she has a cold, or allergies from ragweed pollen.  Back at the house, she drops the stick at the end of the porch instead of in front of the door as I like; when I ask her “Where’s your stick?” she doesn’t run over to get it as she normally would, instead stands there panting.  Probably her mouth is so dry from chomping on the lilac stick, she can’t think to respond to my question today, and I don’t press the issue.

Goldenrod Rises Like a Maze

September 1, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  Have to work tonight, and I need to leave about 3:45.  (About my night and weekend work, I’d like to say that there’s no limit to the amount of preparatory work, to maintain a certain level of performance, that I can do, the many hours of which are not directly billed to anyone; if I were to calculate these hours into what I do get paid, I would probably arrive at a sub-minimum wage – I have not been making mention of this preparatory work in this journal, and, though I say I have to work tonight, I’ve actually already worked about 3 hours this morning – and this is typical for any given day.)  That means I’ll have to take Mway for a walk about 2:30, to do all the things I want to do.  Right now Mway and Moi are taking a nap, but whenever they get up, Mway and I will be going for a walk.

State of the Path:  The ground is again turning white.  In the old orchard, next to the Boy’s tree fort is another tree that looks like it has a fort, for all the monkey vines that clamber up it.  Though I clipped some of the branches on the multiflora near the hedgerow yesterday, some of its other branches still snag me on the shoulder.  As I pass through the goldenrod that rises like a ten-foot green and yellow maze all around me, I feel like I can’t breathe.  Down by the creek, I’m already getting too hot.  Is the vine I see down here some sort of morning glory, or is it more of that bindweed? – I don’t see any big trumpet flowers on it.  I’m still disappointed no dayflowers have bloomed (I see some these days in the garden, where I also see another wildflower I don’t see along the path: one of my favorites, foxtail, with its caterpillar-like flowers that turn silver after a frost).  Lots of bumblebees (but no honey bees – ours must stick by the house), monarchs (or viceroys), black and tiger swallowtails, cabbage butterflies, yellow sulphors (is there such a thing? spelling?), fritillaries, something that looks like a cecropia moth, black wings with an orange mark.

State of the Creek:  For some reason, the pool at the log jam has turned cloudy and chalky, while the other pools remain clear.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing – guess what? – Mway fetches the stick more times than I care to throw it.  I take delight that, on our way back, Mway, who tries to pass me like an aggressive driver, can’t get past me until we reach the walled garden.

Think I Hear a Bullfrog

August 13, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  I have to work tonight and probably should work a little also this afternoon, so I might as well take Mway for a walk this morning.  Moi has already taken her out to throw stick.  She tells me that the path is wet, since it’s been raining, I guess, all night – but a wet path is, of course, no obstacle to me.  I’ll go barefooted in my boots again.  It’s 9:41.

State of the Path:  My walking clothes are damp when I put them on.  Mway is relaxing on the porch after throwing stick with Moi, and looks up at me bug-eyed, surprised to see me.  But she’s soon smiling as she runs and circles the yard, heading to meet me at the path.  I admit I feel a little uncomfortable in my damp clothes, and when I reach the path beyond the walled garden, the idea of walking through wet weeds seems unpleasant to me, so I start whacking at the goldenrod, briars, and giant ragweed with the “pro-quality” stick.  It’s a half-assed job, but it makes me feel like I might stay a little drier than I otherwise would.  Down at the grasses in bug land, I can feel my bare feet sloshing around in my boots.  As I approach the creek, I think I hear a bullfrog, but after a few steps, I realize it’s my feet making a burping sound against the wet rubber of my boots.  I think I hear the whine of another mosquito.  Along the creek, I look at the plant that’s winding around the jewelweed and see that it’s also winding around some goldenrod that I’ve started whacking at.  I wonder if the plant’s some kind of bindweed.  Its little white flowers, or maybe they’re just white buds, grow all along its stringy, winding stem – and they look almost like fungus or coral.

State of the Creek:  Beneath the tree stand, Mway ventures into the creek bed – I hear the clacking of rocks.  Whatever rain we had last night must be soaking into the ground; it hasn’t raised the level of the creek much.  The creek is still a series of disconnected pools, with muddy opaque water in them.  The pool at the narrows has crept closer to the vinyl siding.  I walk over to the feed channel to the skating pond and see there’s no water in it.  Mway meets up with me as I’m stepping through the poison ivy beneath the “chokeberries.”

The Fetch:  She runs ahead of me and is there to greet me at the clearing.  I suspect she will only make one fetch, but it’s hard to tell: she prances about and looks up at me with an eager smile.  I toss the stick – will she bring it back and drop it at my feet?  No, she goes running toward the path along the sumacs and heads back to the house, having to adjust the stick in her mouth once or twice after it gets knocked cock-eyed by the weeds along the path.