June 17, 2010. Thursday.
Situation: Moi has taken Atlas back to Jazz’s, where she finds it easier to dog sit him, although she’s going to have to come back this afternoon, with Atlas in tow, to work tonight. I also work tonight (I worked last night too), and I’ve decided not to do any work this afternoon. Moi has given me explicit instructions to take Mway on a good, long walk, so she won’t feel obliged to give her one when she gets back. This morning, of course, I had to let the chickens out etc., and I threw morning stick for Mway out in the back yard, after which I fed her. I take her out for a walk about 12:45, a moment that Mway has waited for all morning, lying patiently in the music room.
State of the Path: I bring the hedge clippers along with me, figuring that a good, long walk constitutes clipping back some of the weeds. I don’t clip anything, though, unless it’s something really leaning into the path: any kind of briar, like a multiflora or a blackberry, and some of the shrubs, the honeysuckles and the red willows near bug land. A lot of the goldenrod needs to be cut down, but this requires more work, which I don’t feel like doing today. Along the orchard and down by the creek, I help myself to any raspberry which I see has ripened. Near the swale to bug land, I note again a wildflower I saw the other day, with tiny white flowers and fern-like leaves. I wonder to myself if this might be mayweed, since I read the other day that mayweed has fern-like leaves. But looking again at the picture in Audubon, I see clearly that, whatever this plant might be, it’s not mayweed; and I don’t see any other candidate among the pictures.
State of the Creek: The only movement of water I see today are ripples caused by skating water striders and plopping frogs. In one of the pools, I watch the striders for a while, as two of them skate over to a fallen flower petal, each of them rejecting it as something inedible. In the water, I notice some lit up spots, the sun obviously shining down, but near them I see some foggy areas, like smoke plumes in the water – I can’t figure out what this might be, except perhaps for shadows caused by leaves.
The Fetch: This morning Mway fetched the “pro-quality” stick for a good, long time, and she does so again after we arrive at the clearing, where, also, we continue our work of keeping the goldenrod trampled down.
