Aki chases after her Frisbee through a forest of lupine, tall grass, and buttercups that form road a verge along the North Douglas Highway. After she disappears I can track her progress by the twitching of flower stalks she shoulders during her passage. Now thickened with flowers, those lupines not disturbed by the little dog stand like garden gnomes on a lawn badly in need of a mow.

Earlier, she had chased her Frisbee on a nearby gravel beach, empty except for one crow that strutted along the water line like a rich man leaving the funeral of an enemy.