Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

My wife is addicted to that green, leafy stuff.

Not pot. She wouldn’t touch the stuff. I’m talking about the vegetation that grows alongside roads, trails and in the woods. Hiking with her is like pouring honey from a jar while standing on the frozen tundra of Alaska.

Three steps. Stop. Examine. Evaluate. Identify. Repeat.

Her cell phone has so many stored plant photos in it that when she boots it up in the morning, little critters come crawling out.

“Tripping on Trilliums” would be the working title for her book if she had time to write one. Or “Running In Running Cedar.”

“Do you see that running cedar down there?” she asks.

Quickly, I try to access my plant memory bank, which is as leaky as an old boot. Tree? Grass? Flower?

“Remember, it’s also called ground cedar? Or bear’s paws. Or crowsfoot. And fan clubmoss,” she says as part of her spousal continuing education program. She never throws out the Latin name because she knows that would be like me trying to catch Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball. Not happening. Nor does she use those unpronounceable plant names because it would sound show-offy, and she’s as far from show-offy as one can be.

And if that weren’t enough of a challenge for me, she explains that ground cedar isn’t cedar. In fact, it isn’t even remotely related to cedar.

So now I’m struck with fear that my eyes might be starting to glaze over, and she can spot that failing at 100 yards. Fight it, I tell myself. Fight to focus. Don’t drift.

“They aren’t cedars, they are in a group of plants called clubmosses,” she says. Now I’m back in the groove, focused and ready to take my stance and catch the plant knuckleball.

“Oh, so they are mosses and that’s why they grow on the ground,” I say, standing taller and thinking I’ve just impressed her with my plant learning.

“Well, no, they aren’t really mosses either. Some people call them ‘fern allies,’” she says.

And there it is. A knuckleball no man could hit, wobbling at shoulder height and then curving, looping, dropping and sinking into the strike zone with the speed of smell.

Three more steps and I spy it first. A flowering beauty at the water’s edge, a tempting look of a bush, or maybe a tree. Not sure. But in my zeal to show that I am capable of learning and really do know how to catch the green knuckleball, I blurt out, “Oh, look. She’s a beauty, don’t you think?”

Nope. Missed another one.

“No! That’s a mimosa tree. It’s a very bad tree. Evilly invasive. It’s on the state’s invasive exotics list, and it should be removed. It’s in the Rank 1 Severe Threat level group,” she said.

My response? “To me, that sounds like we are under attack by Putin, and we need to call in Zelensky for a drone strike,” thinking what a clever and funny boy am I.

“That’s not funny,” she said.

Of course not. Not at all.

Three more steps.

Larry McDermott is a local, retired farmer/journalist. Reach him at hardscrabblehollow@gmail.com