My Fitbit ran out of juice last night at 3:26 AM.  I knew it was going dead when it was time to go to bed. I went looking for the charger which turned out to be among the missing.  A wholesale search of the family room and patios failed to turn it up, and I finally went to bed, disgusted with myself for being so scatterbrained.  This morning, although I went out to do my steps early on, I was disheartened to think I was missing all those Fitbit steps.  Then I learned something surprising.  My iPhone kept track of the Fitbit steps even though my Fitbit Charge was, as Charles Dickens would say, “dead as a doornail.”

When I came in from walking, 7000 steps to the good but still disheartened, I put our “guy,” Martinus, on the case.  Bill and I are sure good-looking but we’re poor finding.  Tinus is not.  He found the charger cord hiding in the coffee cup holder in the car out in the garage.  And then I remembered.  Last Friday, on our way to Olympia for the very warm South Sound Reading Foundation event, I had to charge the Fitbit in the car and left the charger behind.  Whew!  Glad that mystery is solved.

So now at 11:30 as I write this, I have my “ten” both ways—the Fitbit way and the iPhone way.  And no, that does NOT give me credit for 20,000 steps.  And as of now, Bill who started out a year and a half ago at 2,000 steps a day if he was lucky, is now up to 10,000, too.  There have been many incremental changes for both of us, and all for the better.

I’ve said very little about the yard this summer, so it’s time for a serious yard update. Last year, when we started walking, the garden was five years old but we had spent very little time in it.  (Too far to walk back then.)  All last summer, the changing landscape of the garden was a wonder and a marvel.  This year, it’s familiar territory.  The blueberries and raspberries have come and gone.  So have the daisies as well as the brilliantly red crocosina (Crocosina anrea imperialis if you want to be picky about it!) that the hummingbirds love so much.  There are only one or two hydrangea with any color left in the blooms, and the last petals fell off the lily today, but the black-eyed Susans are in full bloom.  And my wisteria, the one I wanted all my life, is a green jungle at the bottom of the steps with just a lavender bud or two sticking out of the greenery.  In other words, the garden and all its late summer changes are wonderful.

So much for the flora.  As for the fauna?  Bella’s and Jojo’s mole total for the year is up to three.  At $250 per mole (according to a local exterminator) Bella has earned back exactly half of her yearly bill at the Eastside Veterinary Dental Practice.  Bella and Jojo dig up the creatures and drop them off in places where I can find the corpses and deal with them by means of a handy pooper-scooper.  It is also my job to go back around the yard and fill in the open-pit mines they dig in the mulch to get at the pesky creatures. I believe this is what’s called a division of labor.

As for the fish and the heron?  Let me say that the fish are fine, including a whole crew of six and seven-inch long four and five year-old goldfish and our six year-old koi–the Big Guy as we like to call him—who looks like a hulking giant compared to everyone else.  The heron showed up once this year and landed on the lawn just north of the front fish pond.  Bill and I were sitting on the back porch at the time.  Bill grabbed my pre-loaded Nerf machine gun and fired off one of the whistling Nerf gun bullets.  He aimed over the pool house and the bullet landed in the pond somewhere south of where the heron was sitting.  He left and has not returned as far as we know.  In other words, the heron blaster was no problem for him, but whistling Nerf gun bullets are another matter entirely.

This year a family of rabbits have turned up in our yard. They come and go on the wall on the far side of the dog yard fence. There have been a time or two when the puppies have come upon them down in the back yard.  What’s the score there? Miniature dachshunds are quick, but bunnies are a lot quicker.  Oh, and a trio of deer—two does and a buck–are spending a lot of time next door, chowing down on the grass and on the deadfall crab apples.  We’ve not seen the bobcat recently but I suspect he’s like Arnold and “he’ll be back.”

Sometimes I walk out back around the fish pond.  Sometimes I walk out front on the drive. Next to the turnaround out front is tree that always makes me smile and think about Jack in the Beanstalk.  It’s a skinny tree with VERY LARGE heart-shaped leaves—24 inches wide and 36 inches or so long.  BIG LEAVES.  Last year, when I pointed it out to my husband, Bill pronounced it to be a weed and said it was growing too close to the driveway.  As a consequence, he asked the gardener to cut it down which the gardener did, chopping it off at ground level.  Well guess what?  That “weed” is back again this year, bigger and better than ever.  Last year it had one branch.  This year there are three, and as of this morning, it’s a good twelve feet tall.

So this year, I asked Alan Burke, our landscape architect from Classic Nursery to identify said weed.  He took a photo and sent me the following memo:  What do author J.A. Jance and the Dowager Countess Pavlovna have in common?

Our mystery plant my short staff tell me, is not just “any” weed, but is in fact a Paulownia tomentosa  or “Empress tree”…    

The generic name Paulownia honors Anna Pavlovna of Russia. This woman had trouble aplenty, having almost married Napoleon… though had she done so, she might have been able to spend her twilight years lording it over her minions at St. Helena…  In China, the tree is planted at the birth of a girl. The fast-growing tree matures when she does. When she is eligible for marriage the tree is cut down and carved into wooden articles for her dowry. Carving the wood of Paulownia is an art form in Japan and China. In legend, it is said that the phoenix will only land on the Empress Tree and only when a good ruler is in power. (That said, it may die suddenly after the November elections) Several Asian string instruments are made from P. tomentosa, including the Japanese koto and Korean gayageum zithers. (wiki)…

I’m glad to know this, and I hope you are, too, but as far as I’m concerned, that Empress Tree still looks for all the world like Jack’s beanstalk!