Have you ever had a friend that gets you into the strangest circumstances. For me, that friend is Teeg (aka, the Fish Recycler). When he's around, there's no shortage of adventure. So it was this morning, long before dawn, as I found myself dragging a giant tarp through a marsh loaded with cattails while Teeg tried to manage the weight and muck of an overloaded wheelbarrow.
Like a half dozen other mornings in the past year and a half, Teeg and I were determined to make more progress on our pond rehabilitation project out in Sarpy county. Our challenges on this particular morning included:
1) Convincing our wives at 3:00AM that, "Everything's fine, hun; just goin' fishin'; go back to sleep."
2) Legally collecting as many cattails as possible from location A and transporting them across the city to location B for transplant.
3) Confirming that the NRD had closed the pond's drain so it could begin to refil and slowly flood the cattails.
4) Finishing the whole thing in a handful of hours, cleaning up at pond side, changing, and heading into work without smelling like a marsh.
It wasn't a clean 4 for 4, but the deed got done.
I had in my mind that we would collect and transplant 100 cattail rhizomes. We managed 10.
Hey!!! it was really hard work... and it was muddy... and our neoprene waders were really hot and tough to garden in... and it was dark... and it was really muddy... and it was very dark... super dark and very muddy and certainly hard work... and all the laughing at ourselves made the work go more slowly.
We laughed the hardest when we envisioned the look of bewilderment on the faces of friends and family when we shared the pictures of our pitiful stand of 10 cattail clumps with them,
"Yep, we planted those alright. Aren't they just adorable."
So anyway, here are the pics. Hope you enjoy them. And yep, we planted those alright... Aren't they just adorable!
So what is to become of this stand of cattails? Will they take off as cattails are known to do and populate the shores and shallow water in the pond adding aquatic health and vitality and sequestering enough nutrients to prevent under-ice algae blooms that then die off and create oxygen sags, killing the biggest bass and perpetuating a predatory imbalance that leads to an overpopulation of stunted bluegill? No, of course not... I mean yes, sure they will... Well... let's just go with 50/50.
Regardless, Teeg found these cool mushrooms.
