131. Harvest salad

Here are a few more botanical observations derived from watching Gus graze. 

The grass is surprisingly lush and tender for this time of year, and I just learned that its sugar content rises when it gets stressed by cold nights and then has warm sunny days to recover.  So autumn grasses can be as delicious as spring growth, I guess. 

 

But lately Gus is widening his selections.  There’s some lance-leaved kind of plantain, still fresh and green, that he seeks out; and the clover is still good, whether it’s the yellow-blooming hop clover that grows low in the sand or the white- and red-flowered varieties that live among the grass in richer soils.  For more roughage, Gus chooses weeds that have gone by, including dried-up Queen Anne’s lace and fading bedstraw.  

He also goes for mulberry-tree leaves and even twigs, chewing them right up as if they were as tender as grass blades (though they’re much louder as his teeth grind them).  The mulberries are long gone, eaten by birds the instant they got ripe, but evidently the leaves are a toothsome treat as well.

As much as he savors his grazing, Gus has almost totally stopped digging in his heels any more when I pick his head up and walk him off the lawn.  He may yaw or lean back, but I circle him and slacken the lead line to avoid any tug-o-war, and after just one or two of these mild objections he accedes and marches obediently all the way back to his stall. I always tell him it’s nearly dinner time, and I think he must understand the word “dinner” by now.  And I never lie:  I time our return to the barn to coincide with Sandy’s feeding schedule.  Sometimes I even wait and let him watch her pull the little wagon of feed buckets across the driveway toward his barn.  I wasn’t born yesterday, and neither was he.