Leaf Identification, and the Cows Come Home

Yesterday, with my sister for company, I walked quite a way up Mauzy Road and came back with a fistful of leaves to identify. One turned out to be the four-lobed yellow poplar, another the beautifully-named cucumber magnolia, whose leaf is like an outsized beech leaf. (We saw beech nuts, too, from scrawny little beeches.)

The third leaf has been pronounced a Norway maple, but I am not so sure. It is the size of a dinner plate, and it's a maple all right but with roccoco rococo exuberance. Maybe that's just an effect of the size.

It wasn't so much later that we heard a commotion and looked outside to see Paul Mallow bringing the cows home. He blocked the road in front of our house with two buddies' light trucks and the cows wandered off up the road almost out of sight. Then a Pendleton Oil Company truck drove down the road, and the cattle trundled back down at a much faster pace and made the turn into the pasture with Paul and his flagman hollering and switching them. There were many calves among them, sturdy little black beefers.

We're assuming that the appearance of the oil truck was by pre-arrangement and that there's a good reason to drive them up the road and down again. When I see Paul to talk to, maybe I'll find out more.