September 22, 2010. Wednesday.
Situation. I work tonight. Shortly after I get up, while I’m restarting the computer over and over to try to get the wireless connection to work, Moi tells me that she’s concerned about the poison ivy under the pear tree. The past couple years she’s been canning these pears; last year I clipped the poison ivy down, but since I didn’t pull up any of the roots or runners, it of course came back again this year. “Okay,” I tell her, “I guess I can go out there this morning and pull it up.” Since my gardening clothes are the same as my walking clothes, I decide I might as well also take Mway for a walk, even though I believe Moi has just fetched stick with her in the back yard. I first walk down the lane to mail some bills. Mway’s already outside, and she follows me down the lane. I go back in the house to put on my gloves and safari helmet. I decide to take Mway for a walk before I pull up any poison ivy, because after doing that, I’ll have to immediately take a shower and wash my clothes. Mway’s lying in the yard, peering at me. When she sees me grab the birch branch and my walking stick, she gets up and runs over to the chicken coop to bark at the chickens (at 9 o’clock Moi has still not let the chickens out; she’s trying to make sure they lay their eggs in the coop and not hither and thither in the weeds).
State of the Path: I stick to the main path, down to the creek and back. There’s a little bit of dew on the plants, and my pants get spotted. The crack in my boot picks up a briar branch I cut down the other day, and it gets dragged for a few feet before it comes off. A rough-looking black bird (a starling?) gets spooked as I approach and flies out of the touch-me-nots into the maples. In the field across the creek going up to the ridge, I see purple flowers and I wonder if it is ironweed; most of our ironweed has turned brown. I continue to be impressed by the New York or New England asters, which burgeon in the swale, in the feed channel, and along the ridge around bug land, often shooting up through other weeds that were already there.
State of the Creek: The bowl of water at the log jam has disappeared, but there are still the two little puddles at the narrows. I can’t yet say the creek is completely dried up; today there’s more water in the creek than in the driveway.
The Fetch: I toss the stick mostly within the clearing, trying (since my mind’s on pulling up weeds) to get Mway to beat down the goldenrod that’s there, but I make a few tosses into the higher goldenrod down the path. It seems to me that today there’s an understanding between Mway and me that she’s already just fetched the stick with Moi, so Mway limits her fetches to about five, not even bothering to play “Put it down.”
