The bog is mid-summer lush. One giant bubbling soup pot of a digestive system, fueled by sunlight and helped by plenty of rain and warm but moderate temps.

But no sooner does all the leafery and flowery explode upon the scene than do hordes of tiny mammals, slugs, insects and bacteria eating their fill and dying along the way only to be churned up themselves into brown mush that slurps and squishes everywhere. You can almost hear the chomping and if you make the mistake of setting foot in the muddy areas (sometimes up to my knee of course) you are rewarded with a rich and not-so-earthy stink of bog rot.

Little streams are thick with cellulose-foam that would make nice packing material if you dried it. Still parts of the bog are soupy with algae hard at the work of digesting and growing and dying and digesting. Bacteria are also eating the oily sheen that a hundred years of cars and machines have left on the scene but much more slowly, and every time it doesn’t rain for a few days I am rewarded with rainbow colors in the mud to remind me that perfection isn’t everything. A suitable sentiment, in this land settled by people with a need to praise the imperfect as their due.

The hound loves it even more than I do of course. Splishing and splashing around after smells and sniffs and flickerings of light on the water. Less so does he love the hosing that follows to wash off the odiferous pond scum. Don’t feel sorry for him, he gets lukewarm water.