You can be married to someone for a long time and still learn something new about them. It’s no different with a dog. We’ve had BB for nine years, and I had no idea he liked squash. I guess I had never baked one the way he liked.

A week ago, I tossed a squash which was starting to rot into this month’s compost pile. The pile has been cooking at around 120º for a while and I thought the squash would quickly decompose. Today when BB was helping me turn the compost pile, he spotted the squash which has been slowly cooking all week, and he couldn’t get enough of it. He kept coming back and scarfing down chunks of it until it was all gone.

What else would taste good after cooking for a week in a compost pile?

It’s time to use the alder tree that fell down in last week’s storm. It doesn’t take long to drag the pieces of the trunk to the sides of the path to line them. As the wood deteriorates, moss will cover it, creating a soft, green border.

It doesn’t take long for the dogs and chickens to use the new path, though most of the paths are ones the dogs made first. I’m just widening and lining them. When you walk through the woods, you see myriad paths created and maintained by dogs, deer, coyotes, and many other animals. It makes you wonder how long it will be before Google sends out dog sized robots to map and photograph all these animal trails. Or perhaps they could be mapped at night using silent drones with infrared cameras to trace where the deer and coyotes go. Then during the day, the little robots could zip along photographing the animal trails.

If only dogs had wings, great blue herons would be no match for them. But they don’t, so all they can do is sit, and stare, and bark at the big bird sitting high in the trees. The herons will sit and wait, one hour, two hours, as long as it takes for the dogs to give up in frustration, and leave them be, so they can swoop silently down to the banks of the pond to fish.

The herons have great patience. They need it to be good fishers. They can stand in the water, as still as statues, until a hapless fish swims too close, and they stab it with their long beaks.

I dread to think what would happen if the dogs ever caught a heron. A few times they have come close.