Attention [with] dog — Jan 13, 2023

Jan 13.1
Today we try something a little different and postpone our AM walk until after the morning school drop-off, instead of going out before the rest of the house wakes up. It’s 9:15, the sun is shining, and the clouds from last night’s rainstorm are dissipating. Everything is damp, but the temperature is in the upper 40s, so it’s not unpleasant. Abundant standing water along our path adds a little bit of a marshy smell to everything. Coming down to 26th Street, the scent of nearby patchouli incense mixes with the odor of old wet leaves in a pleasantly rich and earthy fashion. 26th Street is surprisingly quiet despite the later hour. No birds are calling, even with minimal competing noise from traffic or trains. It seems the birds do more of their calls at sunrise during this time of year. We stand perfectly still for a minute and listen, and I realize I’m not quite correct about that. I hear a faint chirping nearby, like some small bird is talking softly only to itself.

Moving north on Guilford the sky in front of me suddenly looks like the opening credits of The Simpsons. A seamless bright blue panorama framed by the fluffiest white clouds. On the northeast corner of Lorainne and Guilford I come across an unknown tree and, in my ignorance, I wonder if it is perhaps a birch, or maybe even a sycamore, because of its flaking patchy bark. It has clusters of small oblong pods hanging from its branches. I take a picture, break off the tip of a twig, and keep on moving. An image search reveals it to be a Crepe Myrtle. The pods themselves are the dry remains of small berrylike fruits that separate into five distinct lobes as they dry.

It’s like they’re waiting for someone to feed them.

Not long after I remove them from the tree, I am surprised to discover that the pods have opened up even further, shedding tiny winglike seeds in the process. Without intending to, I have inadvertently captured “before” and “after” pictures of this process.

Conversation with the 4-year-old on the way to daycare: Him: “Dad, I’m growing up!” Me: “Yeah you are, buddy. You’re growing up fast.” *pause* Him: ‘No. I’m THROWING up. I threw up on my shorts.’ Me: “Oh.”

A little farther up Guilford, just before 27th, I notice a tree with long flat dry pods hanging from its leafless branches. I would describe them as “leguminous” — beanlilke. Is it perhaps some type of locust tree? Another picture run through the image search reveals it to be a redbud tree. With the eponymous red buds long gone I am 0 for 2 in guessing trees this morning. An unsurprising state of affairs. That said, the redbud and the locust tree are both members of the Fabaceae order of plants, which is also known as Leguminosae, thanks to the appearance of those pods. Given that they are distantly related, my guess at least counts for something, I suppose.

Leguminous seems like a word well-suited for H.P. Lovecraft‘s writing, and yet I can’t find it in any of his works.

Jan 13.2
Down to the Dell with Trixie and my son. The afternoon is chilly and windy, and it’s hard to track the boy and the dog at the same time, which leaves very little spare attention for anything else. A mini dust devil of leaves kicks up for a moment, swirling in a counterclockwise spiral. I know that thanks to the coriolis effect, large low pressure weather systems in the northern hemisphere (like hurricanes) always spin counterclockwise, driven by the earth’s angular momentum above the equator while their cyclone equivalents in the southern hemisphere turn clockwise for the same reason. And at the equator, they just don’t happen. The closer to the equator a hurricane or cyclone gets, the more of its strength bleeds off like a tired bicyclist riding uphill until it dissipates into nothing much at all. The equator is a demilitarized zone that hurricanes can never cross. Regardless, it is only a coincidence that this tiny tornado is gyrating in a hemispherically appropriate direction. Its rotation is determined by the flow of wind across the contours of the immediate environment rather than by any larger planetary forces. The wind picks up steadily and the clouds darken the longer we remain.

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As we leave, a low-flying medivac chopper suddenly speeds into view, rapidly descending closer and closer, until it passes overhead less than 100 feet above us. It is heading towards a nearby hospital helipad, and we stand on the sidewalk gaping upwards as it noisily shuttles by until it is obscured by the roofline of the buildings between us and its unseen destination. We pause to digest this dramatic punctuation mark at the end of our afternoon activities, before finally walking to the car and heading home.

Jan 13.3
With the wife away for the evening, and a 6-year-old in bed at home, a long late-night walk is out of the question. Tonight’s excursion is extremely brief. A few steps out the front door and over to a nearby tree before turning right around to come back inside. Earlier there was the delightful odor of fresh cut pine, possibly from a neighbor disposing of a Christmas tree, but there is no sign of that now. Just a cold and windy street, and a dad hurrying to get back inside so that his son doesn’t wake up to an empty house.

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January 13