Moi Explains the Situation to Mway

June 9, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  Work late morning and early afternoon, and have to work again tonight.  When I get home about 1:30, Mway and Moi are taking a nap, so I lie down to rest also.  Besides it’s raining fairly hard.  Everyone gets up about an hour later, and it’s now about 2:45.  It’s now only drizzling, and I’ve gone on walks in a drizzle before, but now I’m also more pressed for time.  Mway is pacing around the kitchen, in expectation that I’m going to take her out; I ask Moi for her advice, and she says I don’t have to take Mway out for a walk in a drizzle.  “Mwayla,” she says, “you go on walks a lot.  It’s raining today.”  So I’ve decided to forego a walk today, which will give me plenty of time to shave and shower and get dressed for work tonight.  Outside my office window, I notice, for the first time this year, a number of day lilies down by the summer house in bloom.

Lo! Jack-in-the-Pulpit Fruits

June 8, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  Work late morning, all afternoon, take Mway out when I get home, about 5 pm.  Moi says she already took Mway out for an afternoon fetch and fed her – so why do I take her for a walk?

State of the Path:   I look in stupefaction at all the different types of grass; an online search last night didn’t yield any good sites to help me with identifying them. One grass that intrigues me has wooly spikelets like wool grass, but it doesn’t look quite like the picture of wool grass in the Audubon.  Underneath the one stand of jack-in-the-pulpits, I brush back the leaves with my stick and uncover what I’ve never seen before: two fruits.  They look like little ears of corn with green kernels.  I whack down a bunch of blackberry brambles.  I do notice there are some black raspberries, but again this year not as many as there are blackberries.  Gone completely now are the white flowers of the multiflora bushes: like the honeysuckles, except for the ones that are now bearing bright red berries, they have receded into green anonymity.  As I walk up toward the clearing, I think to myself that the strawberry patch should be called the poison ivy patch.  The sumacs are bearing green flowers. 

State of the Creek:  Mway disappears for a while, but then reappears as I start walking along the creek.   She wades into a pool of water and takes a sip, after I take note of a spot in the creek which is mostly grown up with jewelweed and other weeds.

The Fetch:  Mway almost walks across the whole clearing without stopping.  But when I call her back she ends up fetching the “pro-quality” stick more times than I care to count.  Walking back on the path, I see a blackberry bramble leaning across it.  Since Mway now has the stick, I have no means of brushing it out of the way, except to step on it at the base and smash it to the ground.

Wonder What All the Grasses Are

June 7, 2010.  Monday.

Situation:  Work morning and afternoon, and take Mway out when I get back, about 4:30.  Pressing on my mind is that I’d like to mow the lawn this evening, so my walk is not as leisurely as I’d like.

State of the Path:  The Jerusalem artichokes have been coming up for some time now in front of the chickens’ cage.   I forgot to mention before, but I have noticed what indeed look like little mulberries growing on the white mulberry tree near the outbuilding.  Out on the side path, I beat back weeds with the “pro-quality” stick same as I did yesterday, giving up again where the goldenrod is coming up the thickest.  And as I walk along I casually grab whatever weed my gloved hand happens to fall upon and pull up whatever I can.  Of all the wildflowers that I mentioned earlier in the spring, it seems only the fleabane is still out, although I still notice the now rather huge leaves of the jack-in-the-pulpit, and I see, almost hidden under grass by the creek, a couple of the yellow flowers that I think I was never able to identify.  But, except for the elderberries and the red willows, the fields almost seem flowerless at this time of the season.  Another exception of course is the flowers that appear on the grasses, and as I walk along I wish I could identify the various types I see.  The Audubon wildflower book does not include many grasses.  There is timothy mentioned, and I do see some of that, and there is also wool grass mentioned, and I see a lot of different types of grasses that look something like wool grass but not quite.  And then I wonder what type of grass it is that grows so much in bug land and in other areas that remain wet late into the season, such as the skating pond.  Moi says she thinks it’s called red grass, but she’s not sure and tells me to look it up.  But I don’t have time to research this on a day that I have to mow the lawn.  I haven’t yet noticed any black raspberries, but all along the path now, I see green blackberries appearing.  Down by the creek, I see what seems like more areas where the jewelweed has been flattened, and not just by wind or rain:  it seems that they’ve been flattened by deer, but unlike in past years I’ve yet to see a deer on a walk since I’ve started keeping this journal.

State of the Creek:  I hear Mway stepping into the water when we first get to the creek.  Later on, at the crest of the skating pond, I see an area of the creek, about twenty feet wide and that must be filled with water in the spring, that is now almost completely dry.  There is an old tire on the opposite bank.

The Fetch:   I note that the clearing is remaining clearest where Mway spins around as she’s waiting for me to toss the stick.  The weeds are also not so high at the other end of the clearing where the stick lands, and Mway has to hunch down to pick up the stick and turn around.  And then there’s an area in the middle of the clearing that is well beaten down because she takes this route most of the time when bringing the stick back.  Otherwise the clearing is becoming somewhat unclear.

Pee on Unidentifiable Weeds

June 6, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  As it turned out, Mway didn’t have to spend the day in the kennel at Ezra’s; Moi decided to let Mway stay here at the house during the wedding, since the Boy would be returning in the evening afterwards.  Moi and I spent the night at her sister Kate’s hotel suite in H______; I had to get up early to drive back for work in the late morning (as it turned out work, at a different place than usual, was canceled after an hour due to passing storms).  I’ve returned home, and Mway is waiting outside for me to come out, anxious for a walk.  It’s about 3:15 pm.

State of the Path:  I decide before heading out to sweep up some of the debris in the pool, mostly yellow willow leaves from the distressed tree in our yard and the branchy seed-like things (catkins?) from the maple right next to the pool.  Moi arrives while I’m doing this, and Mway, losing her patience with me, starts chasing some of the chickens, until first I and then Moi yell at her.  I see that I’m going to have to head out directly, and get the “pro-quality” stick from the porch.  At the walled garden I take a whiz – as I’m doing so I suddenly realize I’m peeing on a fine patch of weeds of a type that I never noticed before.  They’re not goldenrod, or Moi’s dogbane (later I bring a specimen in the house; Moi can’t identify it either).  Along the old orchard, the Virginia creeper has leaves as big as burdock (if the leaves of our burdock were not the size of sofa cushions).  Winding back from the hedge row, with every step I beat down goldenrod, milkweed, and every other weed on my right hand side with my stick, until the goldenrod becomes so thick I give up on the task.   I look for lingering signs of the storm that passed through while I was at work, and conclude that maybe it didn’t rain here; the ground and the weeds are remarkably dry.  The only evidence I see is that here and there the jewelweed is flattened down.   Along the seeps of bug land, the spikelets of grass (timothy?) tower over my head and wave in the breeze.  The elderberry flowers are getting fatter.  The green flowers on what I’ve been calling red willows are starting to turn white.  Watching not to trip over the dead locust branches hidden in the weeds, I bang my head on a low tree branch – which is one of the reasons I wear a safari helmet on these walks.  In an oak tree near the crest of the skating pond, a number of black birds (if I could see better with my old contacts, maybe I’d be able to tell that they are redwing blackbirds) fly around in a fit and chatter up a storm.  The phlox has disappeared.   The sumac tree that has fallen over the far feed channel and blocks the path there still lives, bearing as many leaves as any of the other many sumacs.

State of the Creek:  If it did rain here, there’s no sign of it from the water level of the creek.  At one point Mway walks in to cool off and take a sip.

The Fetch:  Even though there’s a breeze, by the time I reach the clearing I’m hot and sweaty.  I throw the stick toward the bushes, and for a minute I think Mway’s not going to be able to find it in the goldenrod.  But she does find it, and for all her anxiousness about taking a walk today, only fetches it about four times.

The Pen for Mway

June 5, 2010.  Saturday.

Situation:  Today’s Jazz’s wedding.  Mway will have to spend the day in Ezra’s pen, and I won’t be able to take her for an afternoon walk.  Moi took her out this morning, and upon her return, showed me how her sweat pants were soaked with water from walking through the morning’s wet weeds.

Vines Stretch Out Their Tentacles

June 4, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  Work tonight (I could’ve also worked all day), and decide to take Mway out about 2.  Earlier this morning, Moi’s sister Charlene (also in for the wedding) was sitting outside by the fire pit.  Mway, who had wandered outside, pulled a charred log from the pit and started barking in expectation that Charlene throw it.   I went outside and found another stick, which I threw for Mway until she had her fill.

State of the Path:   See a chipmunk scurry across the path, hear bees buzzing.  Hedge garlic starting to turn yellow and brown.  Even more striking, the multiflora flowers are starting to shed; no longer see the huge globs of white all over the field.  But in flower now are, what is now clear, elderberry bushes: there are a number of them up from the maples and quite a few near the pin oaks.  And these shrubs are definitely different from the others that had similar buds, what for now I must consider red willow shrubs.  Grape vines are stretching their tentacles toward the path, especially near the back hedgerow.  Goldenrod ever higher, blackberry shoots ever taller.  The phlox is disappearing.  I look for wild strawberries but see none.

State of the Creek:  Water lowest I’ve seen it yet this year; large areas of rocks with but a trickle through them.  Yet my trampling feet still scare a frog or two into the water.  Mway wanders into the creek at midpath, and again at the crest of the skating pond.  I look for signs of cattails in the pond, but see nothing – I suspect the pond is very dry right now.

The Fetch:  Bring along a stick found in the music room.  Mway fetches it more times than I care to count.  I’m afraid a couple times she might lose sight of it in the weeds, but she keeps track of it very well.  Play “Put it down” once.  I’m hot, itchy, and sweaty after the walk; time to go into the pool.

Cal Covers for Me

June 3, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:  Work both this afternoon and tonight, and don’t have time to take Mway for a walk.  Last night, though, Moi’s brother Cal arrived from Seattle (here for Jazz’s wedding on Saturday), and he accompanied Moi on her morning walk with Mway; I guess, from what Moi tells me, that Mway especially enjoyed Cal throwing the stick for her.