Mosses

The dogs and I walked in the rain again this morning. It had rained most of the night. I heard it on the roof and there are many puddles. It's a gentle rain, no wind, temp. 40 degrees. We are burning tamarack in our outside wood furnace. When I first went out, I thought the good piney smell was coming from the wood smoke. But I kept smelling it all through the walk. It must have been all the soaking wet pine needles around me and underfoot. There is a kind of dry, crunchy, light gray moss on the sand ridge where we go into the woods. I heard someone call it reindeer moss once. Bear likes to roll in it. I think it scratches her back. Today she only tried it once. I noticed that it looked bigger and softer and bent down to touch it. The rounded clumps looked like the tops of old men's heads. Sure enough, they felt soft like wet, gray hair. When everything in the forest is as sopping wet as it is today, it accentuates all of the mosses and lichens and mushrooms. Some of the bushes and little trees looked like they had been flocked for Christmas decorations. One old rotting stump was about completely covered with many shades of gray and gold and green. We walk past it every day and I never noticed it before. It would make a beautiful photograph. The gold and orange mosses especially are much more vivid when wet against the black branches and twigs. I seem to remember reading or hearing that if you are lost in the woods you should check which side of tree trunks have moss growing on them. This will point you North. It's bogus information from my observations. Trees around here have moss all around. If one side seems dominant, it's just as likely to be east or west or south. My advice--carry a compass.

Holiday family fun

All halloween items at the Ben Franklin store in Warroad, Minnesota are now fifty per cent off. Two young men in work clothes were taking advantage of that Friday afternoon. One said to the other, "You gonna dress your kid up like a clown? I thought you hated clowns." The other replied, "I do. It'll give me an excuse to beat the crap out of him."

Hunting in the rain

When Matthew and Peter were here last month, they took four dogs for a walk first thing every morning. Matt may have skipped a time or two, but Pete went every day. On the day they left for home, he asked me if I was going to continue the tradition. We all laughed. It wasn't very likely. I read and drink tea in the mornings, walk dogs late in the afternoon. But I had promised myself that if we took on the responsibility of another dog I would put forth more effort. [My husband asked me to also promise him that I wouldn't complain about doggy inconveniences.] Yet, for a number of reasons, I'm proud to report that I have been walking the dogs most mornings and most afternoons as well. The weather has been great. Fall is a wonderful time to walk in the woods. My husband has been working until two in the morning at Marvin Windows. When he's doing that, I take over the job of keeping our outside wood furnace going. I'm outside at the wood pile each morning. The dogs are with me, of course. It's so easy to make two fellow creatures happy just by heading on down the driveway. On a more selfish note, two walks a day, plus a short one down the driveway at bedtime and those dogs are perfect angels when they're in the house with me in the evening--even antsy little Bear. Besides that, it seems it's good for me. My husband said he has noticed that my gait has improved. I have noticed that my knees and hips ache less on morning walks. And for the dogs, I think the walks are their daily jobs. We patrol our territory. I wonder what the deer hunters who hunt the state woods east of us would think if they knew how thoroughly we fan out and chase all the game away twice each day. Bear is a "oh what the heck" kind of hunter. If she sees something run, she chases it a little. But for Sadie, hunting is a serious affair. She usually flushes out two or three grouse on each of our walks. They're really hard to catch if your human companion won't carry a gun, but she seems to think that the effort should be made anyhow. Bear thought it was a new game at first. The bird goes whirring through the trees. Sadie dashes after it. Bear goes bounding after Sadie, jumps on her back and then Sadie pins her to the ground with much serious growling and snapping. Bear's no dummy. She leaves the birds to Sadie now. She sticks to pouncing on the mice in the tall grass. This week we had rain. One afternoon when I went out to check the boiler, I noticed that Bear and Sadie were both muddy, especially Bear who gets wet and then curls up in the sand under the deck. It was raining hard and I had half way decided to skip the afternoon walk. The only trouble was, I had a couple of movies picked out to watch on T.V. I wouldn't enjoy them much with two restless, dirty dogs tussling around. So we set out in the rain and it was on that dark and dripping afternoon that Sadie finally had some luck with her hunting. To be honest, we didn't make the kill. Some other creature, maybe the one whose hairy scat we'd been seeing on the trail all week, had killed a rabbit and eaten most of it. All that was left was a little paw, a strip of fur and a leg bone with a little meat still on it. Sadie found it, carried it and dropped behind to crunch up the bone. Bear put on a great show of being totally uninterested in Sadie and her puny little rabbit foot. But when Sadie dropped it and stepped off the trail for a little look around, Bear immediately grabbed it and took off through the brush. Sadie gave chase. There was much noise. By the time they came back to me, the rabbit foot was lost. There hadn't been much left of it anyhow. When we arrived home we were all soaking wet. After we were towelled off, Sadie and Bear were soft and clean. We shared a can of Campbell's Chunky. One scoop over Sadie's dog food, one scoop over Bear's and two scoops for me. They sacked out early and I watched my movies in peace.

WILL there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like water-lilies?
Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
Oh, some wise man from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called morning lies!

I MEASURE every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.

I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.

I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.

I wonder if when years have piled—
Some thousands—on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;

Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.

The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,—
Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.

There ’s grief of want, and grief of cold,—
A sort they call “despair”;
There ’s banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.

And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,

To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those that stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own.

Emily Bonus

I like this one:

A door just opened on a street–
I, lost, was passing by–
An instant's width of warmth disclosed,
And wealth, and company.
The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by–
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.

This one sounds like a Mom kind of poem (?):

I haven't told my garden yet,
Lest that should conquer me;
I haven't quite the strength now
To break it to the bee.
I will not name it in the street,
For shops would stare at me–
That one so shy, so ignorant–
Should have the face to die.
The hillsides must not know it,
Where I have rambled so,
Nor tell the loving forests
The day that I shall go–
Nor lisp it at the table–
Nor heedless by the way
Hint that within the riddle
One will walk today!

Autumn bonus

May and June were mainly cold and rainy. July and August were mostly hot and humid. But we've been having a wonderful autumn. We've had some frosts; one really hard one at 23 degrees. But we're also having many long stretches of bright blue skies and sunshine, temps in the sixties. I think we had more color in our changing leaves than usual--more red and orange. Most have fallen now and are shuffling underfoot. But up here where we live we have an added autumn bonus. The tamarack trees are turning. They are conifers but not evergreens. Their needles turn golden in the fall. Seeing the golden tamaracks mixed in among their dark green conifer cousins and the white birches is a beautiful sight. Bear and Sadie and I have been walking in the woods twice a day because it is so neat. We know it can not last much longer. Usually our walks are solitary affairs, but one morning last week we ran into two of our neighbors and a bird hunter with his golden lab all on the same morning. The dogs looked good, but I was dressed in a turquoise nightgown, gray flannel pajama bottoms and an orange jacket. Oh, well.

Emma is thriving

Emma came to church today with her Mom and brother. She has really been growing and rounding out these last two months. She's a very pretty little girl. Her brother Christopher, who is two, is going to be a man of few words, I think. Subject and verb. Some time ago he started asking his mother occasionally "Daddy doing?" When his mother was in the hospital having the baby, he came to church with his Grandmother. He asked her very plaintively several times during church, "Mommy doing?" Maybe because Emma is so little, today he shortened it even more. "Baby do?"

More computer help

I lost my template and was temporarily out of commission. The consultants had to work on my blog for me. I was once told that I am a high maintenance chick. [I liked that . It makes me sound young and modern and worth maintaining.] But now I am back on the air again and I am happy to report, so is the CBC. Their labor disruption is over and a contract has been signed that should last until 2009.

To blog or not to blog

I have been absent from my own blog for a long, long time. So long that I have thought several times that I should just let it go. I suspect when I hear about the millions of blogs that have started that I wouldn't be the first to abandon one. And yet, something in me wants to continue. It is a way to express myself after all. I need to make myself a computer habit. I am a creature of habit pretty much and that would do it. I think while I've been gone I've had a virtual visit from one of my computer consultants again. Wasn't the Emily poem a different one? "I heard a fly buzz when I died" has many happy memories of times past connected to it. Teen age sons found my fondness for it very, very funny. Also, didn't the side print on my blog used to be red? One of the computer consultants wasn't sure he liked it red. The computer consultants actually made a house call several weeks ago. My home page has been personalized with a gold background and falling leaves motif. Chirping bird songs greet me each time I log on. I have an antique teapot as my background. Should be easy to develop a computer habit with all that going on, right? One of the consultants feels that my e-mail problems could stem from an unconscious habit of dragging my hand across the "a" key and the control key at the same time. If you do that, everything is highlighted and the next thing you type erases everything. Who knew? How do people without visiting consultants find these things out?