LaborDay, Monday Sept. 4. The dogs and I head into the cool morning air a little after 9 am. I was a little later than usual with most things, as a book had wiggled it's way into my (usually) reserved morning hours. By the time I took out the leashes, stuffed bags into a pocket and sat on a chair, sweet old Zeno rushed up to me and touched my hand with his open mouth--"come on, Mom, what's been taking so long?" (A highly unusual action for this mellow-tempered dog!)

The air is cool this morning, the sky a clear pale blue. I note the vigorously growing cascade of ivy close to the end of our drive. Pale green clusters of buds, or seeds, stand out on springy stalks arranged in a spiral around the main tendril projecting from the vertical carpet of green. I suppose it must be English Ivy.* I seem to be riding along on a mixture of thoughts and feelings this morning, but as the dogs and I continue back west along Simpson my attention comes back to the moment. I note the two Ailanthus trees in the parking lot of a neighbor. In our humble neighborhood, their is often room for two, three or four car "parking lots" in front of the houses, which are often small, but have lots are mostly capacious. The smaller Ailanthus tree has red to orange colored seed pods, and the larger has paler green to pink pods. I notice that the large, almost palm-like stems which hold the leaves, also have differing hues, the smaller tree having rather orange stems, and the larger green tending to grey. A little further along the road, I hear a woodpecker's rapid tok-tok-toktoktok as it pecks a tree or phone pole. Right after that, a telephone rings on the other side of the road. Who could be calling? Who is knocking? Earlier this week, I saw an Ailanthus tree growing in a space between two large commercial buildings, with it's crown of leaves and seeds waving majectically from the top, above both. "Look at me, I can grown anywhere!" it seemed to call. The space between buildings couldn't have been more than 1 1/2 feet across . . .

It was a lovely walk this morning, but I will digress from that topic, since today is Labor Day. I"ll take this chance to quote R. Adin Steinsaltz on the subject of Labor:

"The bad luck of the ant is not that it works so hard, but that it hasn't the time or the intelligence to appreciate it's work.

Humankind has the advantage of being able to give itself a day off . . . not because doing nothing is important, but because we need to stop and look around in order to understand where we are in the big picture and where we should be."


*Checking later on the internet--the driveway plant matches the pictures. Again, this is an invasive plant, latin name hedera helix, another of the Plant Conservation Alliance's Least Wanted Species. The website--http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien--warns that, " . . . as the ivy climbs in search of increased light, it engulfs and kills branches, blocking light from reaching the host tree’s leaves . . . The host tree eventually succumbs entirely from this insidious and steady weakening . . . the added weight of the vines makes infested trees much more susceptible to blow-over . . . Trees heavily draped with ivy can be hazardous if near roads, walkways, homes and other peopled areas. On the ground, English ivy exclude(s) native plants (and may) serve as a reservoir for Bacterial Leaf Scorch, a plant pathogen harmful to elms, oaks, maples and other native plants."