Image from Russ's Picasa web album

 

Instead of tea leaves, I've been reading the trailings left behind by rising floodwaters.  In one species' crisis, it seems, lies another's opportunity. While people are suffering from damage to their material world, plants are getting a chance to spread their progeny into new territory.

The thin sideburns of mostly vegetative debris that mark the highwater points in my neighborhood seem to be dominated by maple leaves. Some have traveled long distances downstream. Or maybe I'm just maple-focused and noticing them more. Baby trees from last year's crop are popping up in even the most carefully tended landscaping mulch--none of which is in my own yard, I hasten to add. I've let my yard go "free," so I don't see the seedlings until they've grown eight feet tall and come tapping at the windows. 

If you take a standardized test that asks you how maples transport their seeds and you pick "water" instead of "air" from the answer choices, you'll be marked wrong. But those wings can act as sails and rudders, too. Life is never a simple as multiple choice answers, and the more you observe the harder it is to pick one answer on the tests. Usually, the answer is "usually a, but sometimes b or c, you just never know." 

Teaching to those tests leaves a lot out. If you've ever read Michael Pollen's Botany of Desire, you can never see plants in quite the same way. Instead of pawns without will or intention, you see them as entrepreneurs who make use of any means possible to spread their kind throughout the world. You also know that Johnny Appleseed wasn't making farmers happy with the source of apple pie; he was giving them the means to make hard cider, something the settlers appreciated even more. Apples grown from seed are weird and unpredictable, lending themselves best to fermentation.

But back to maple seeds. I wonder if kids today have history with them as some of us do. Growing up in simpler times, we spent countless hours with those little helicopters, twirling them, pasting them on our noses, making tiny dolls with dancing skirts, or just looking through the intricate fiber network of their wings. Nature was a source of delight, occasionally fear, and always wonder.

Walking along the Underwood Parkway, Idgy and I came upon a section of yellow crime scene tape.

Of course, it wasn't surrounding a crime scene. It was just part of the jetsam tossed up by the receding snows. Not the best sign of spring, but a sure thing.

And then there was the toll of pot-hole-pocked roads. We found bits of housings, hub caps, tire shreds, and most of a motorcycle exhaust system.

I don't know if we should be encouraged by a better class of litter this year. Along with the parkway litterer's usual beverages of choice (Mountain Dew, Pabst, and Southern Comfort) were the remains of vitamin waters, Bitter Woman IPA, and a nice French Chardonnay-Viognier, Le Grand Noir (The Black Sheep). Inexpensive, but it pairs well with salmon.

I didn't see any gourmet dinners, but I did learn that Taco Bell offers The Fourth Meal. Apparently, this is for the starving people of America who can't make it from dinner to breakfast and need concentrated nourishment to make it through the night. Judging by the leavings, there seem to be many of the were it not for this wasting away's right here in our town.  

People are still smoking Marlboros. Lots of them, judging by the crumpled packs under the evergreens. That brand, in case you didn't know, is owned by Altria, a Kraft Foods spinoff that bought Phillip Morris, got rid of Kraft, and bought up SABMiller, which owns you know what. If you want to know what business values, there's the story in a softpack and a six pack.

Next time we'll bring along a black trash bag and declare ourselves Tosa anthropologists. And we don't have to disturb a single bone to study the habits of the natives.

Dear MMSD,

I'm not exactly sure if I'm addressing this to the right entity. Like so many Tosans, I'm a little fuzzy about who exactly is responsible for the Twin Craters on either side of Swan Boulevard.

Which, by the way, are starting to look like nice, smooth craters and not old craggy cratery craters. But I digress.

You know the little pond on the side that's not supposed to have a little pond? Well, my dog (Idgy for short) has discovered that lake and her mission in life, which is to chase all geese, gulls, and miscellaneous avian interlopers from the vacinity.

It's a muddy job but someone has to do it. 

Like those other Tosans, I'm not quite sure what will be done with the crater when you aren't pumping water from some other place into it, but rumor has it you are going to put soccer fields there. That or rice paddies, but I'm banking on soccer fields. What else would you put in suburban greenspace, even if we aren't Brookfield yet?

But again I digress.

Geese are a nuisance on the playing field. You can't kick 'em, much as you might like to. Even when they aren't there, they leave their calling cards, if you know what I mean.

Well, Imogene is a lean, mean, goose abatement machine. I know your budget's hovering around $95 million, so I'm thinking we can work something out to benefit all of us.

Presently, I'm training her to rescue kids in soccer pads who might fall into the water. Think what you'll save in insurance! 

Call me.


 

When we moved to Tosa 16 years ago, I couldn't wait for fall and the chance to rake -- and burn -- leaves.

That thrill didn't last long. We couldn't burn leaves for all sorts of good reasons. And once the little kids stopped delighting in jumping in the leaf mountains and became old enough to refuse to rake them, the pleasure became a chore.

A few years back I broke down and bought a leaf blower, under the theory that the use of loud and weapon-like equipment would raise the kids' interest in herding leaves. It was a good idea, but my theory was quickly disproven.

Still, walking among the leaves and wondering at the colors and patterns they make on the paving remains magical. I love the crunching sound when they are dry and stepped upon, and the way they float and drift when you kick them. Someone's burning leaves somewhere: the air smells smokey-crisp.

Idgy loves walking in the leaves for entirely different reasons. She loves to bound like a deer, and the leaves inspire her. It's quite charming.

But her seasonal "job" as doggie paleontologist is another matter entirely. Last year, she discovered that bodies of small mammals are often buried in the leaf piles that line the streets. She'd often sniff, dive, and come up with a mummified vole in her mouth. Manual extraction was often required to remove the offending body. It's a nasty job but sometimes you've got to do it.

This morning we argued about our pace, she wanting to stop and dig for artifacts, me wanting to walk briskly and avoid exhumations.

At one point, she feigned her territory-marking posture, so I stopped. Nose quivering, she dove 18 inches into the curbside pile and arose triumphant, an almost intact squirrel skull in her mouth.

Alas, poor Gray Squirrel. We knew him, Idgy: a fellow of infinite taunting and speed; you have chased him often in vain pursuit, but now you've got him, dead in the leaves, at last.

Yesterday was such a bad day.

The highlight was when the Triple A guy who came to fix my flat tire said "Dang, M'am, but you sure do look like Diane Keaton!" Actually, I look like about two Diane Keatons, but I took it as a compliment.

"Um, wow! Oh. . . well. . .God! Thanks!"

Apparently he didn't notice that I also talk like Diane Keaton. Something to do with coming of age in the Annie Hall era, I suspect.

When I told my kids, they said "Who's Diane Keaton?" Sigh.

But today is another kind of day entirely. For one thing, I'm home, recuperating from some vague unpleasant thing that probably explains yesterday's badness: I was off my game.

I got to sleep in and then indulge in my spiritual practice, walking the dog.

Someone was practicing slow scales on the clarinet across Underwood Creek from the Oak Leaf trail, and on my side, children shouted on the playground. The New England asters have popped, purple and pale blue next to the goldenrod. The air smells clean, like walnuts, even so close to the concrete creek bed where sometimes, stench is too polite a term.

Idgy and I walked down to the water. I emptied the lint from my pockets and asked whoever it is I ask to be forgiven for my forgetting.

We climbed the bank. It's a huge year for wild grapes, and I ate a handful that grew along the bank.

On the paved bike path where we emerged, someone had scrawled in large chalk letters one word: "Sweetness."

Indeed.

You know it’s a slow news week when TosaNow reports that a Tosa company completes two projects. And neither one in Wauwatosa. It might be newsworthy when your kids actually complete something they started, but I’m guessing Selzer-Ornst does that with all the projects they start.

* * *

The rain is nice and needed. But I’m stuck in a house with an excessive amount of vegetative matter from this morning’s farmers market in Brookfield and a stir-crazy dog.

I can do things with the tomatoes and basil, but the dog wants exercise. Bark. Bark. BARKBARKBARKBARK!!!

For now, a furious tongue workout with a peanut butter-filled kong will have to do.

* * *

Even with a car full of sweet corn, green beans, and red onions, I had to stop at the new Fresh Foods store at Brookfield Square. I’m not often tempted by the mall, but resisting this will take some self-control.

The best part was the engaging staff, scores of animated and friendly folks.

Oh: and the great jazz trio. I’m not sure why the store's management stuck them in the entrance where you could only listen in passing. If they’d been playing in the store, I’d have stayed all morning and impulse-purchased more than $19.56 worth of foccacia, "artisanal" cereal, and herb-roasted chicken.

Still, in aiming to make grocery shopping an “experience,” they seem to have hit a new note for this side of town.

At the dog park on the County Grounds, where I spend a fair amount of time with Idgy, both of us sniffing around the edges of the community there, trying to figure out our place in it, one male stands out. He’s a bold fellow who thinks he’s leader of the pack.

His name is Tank. Idgy trembles when he approaches her.

The thing is, Tank is a Chihuahua. Wouldn’t fit in a teacup, but I’m pretty sure I could stuff him in a 15 oz root beer mug—if I could catch him, that is.

Not that I would, mind you.

Last night I spent the evening in Muskego, eating curry with old friends and new acquaintances. One couple wanted to move to what’s now called “55 or better” housing in Milwaukee County, where services are better than in Waukesha County. But their hunt was stymied by the dog rules.

It seems the places that welcome pets really welcome petite pets. “Dogs under 17 pounds,” say, or “weighing less than 22 pounds.” The highest limit I’ve found is 40 lbs, a hair under mid-size for dogs.

The couple’s chocolate lab, now arthritic himself and much slowed down from his turbocharged lab puppyhood, probably hadn’t weighed 17 pounds since he was three months old.

I’d love to know how the rule makers arrived at such a number. Some of the mellowest dogs at the dog park are Rottweilers. Tank is a bigger dog than any of them, and he’ll tell them so—and they’ll agree.

So it seems like you’d want a behavior test rather than what amounts to dog profiling if you are deciding who'd be a good neighbor.

I have a tough time taking dog’s rules seriously. After all, they weren’t carved into tablets and handed down from a mountain. They were written by a committee—of Yorkie and Peek-a-poo owners, I’ll wager.