Stalking the wild hyacinths

Monday was a GREAT day for me. I didn't hurt (something that totally drives my days anymore) so I suggested to Darling that we take a little drive over to the next teeny town over. There is a big slough/canal where there is always a bunch of people fishing but there are also wild hyacinths growing there. I'm talking about maybe 2-3 ACRES of 'em in several spots. LOTS. Gazillions. The canal meanders for about 40 miles, so I am talking about A. LOT. And I want some for the koi pond.

I grew up here and all of the canals are about the same. THey've been dug out with a "V" or a backhoe and about every half mile or so, there is a weir of sorts..mainly telephone poles sunk into the water so that you can cross over by foot. The water can get through but not anything really big (like bodies). The little hyacinths can get through and grow and get caught at the next bridge. So we pull over in the dirt and I climb down the riverbank...which I thought was maybe a 12 degree slant.(I hadn;t given this part a lot of thought.) It was more like 70 degrees, so in seconds, I was neck deep in these huge hyacinths. I had on shoes (I was raised here...barefoot in the muck is a straight road to lockjaw)...and except for the total surprise of how quickly I went sliding down the bank it was sorta fun.

So I start tossing these HUGE blooming plants up to Darling (we had brought a great big bucket with us), until it was jam packed. Tons of duckweed, too, so I got about a 5 gallon bucket filled with that, too.

Now comes the time foe me to get up this bank. I can't get up into the dry dirt by myself and I have only one functional arm, so I can't haul myself out with a rope. So Darling, totally gape mouthed, watches me start swimming thru this water that he has no idea how deep, if it has a current or undertow (it doesn't because I can see from my vantage point that it is just a slow moving canal). He is thinking I'm going to sucked under and I'm thinking that I sure hope that I can crawl up that partially submerged log to the bridge.

Which I do. He can't decide to be mad at me or glad I'm not stuck in some machinery. I however, haven't had so much fun in ages. I don't hurt (the water was pretty cold), I got HUGE plants and there are gazillions more. Plus, until I went away to college, I did this kind of thing all the time.

In a couple of weeks, I'm talking Girlie and her best friend into driving out and help me get more. This time, I'm taking a ladder and several big trash cans...because I have a 6,000 gallon koi pond and these are native to the climate hyacinths PLUS tons of duckweed. The blooming plants go in the filter; the rest in the pond.

THEN the next big project is to wrap the pond filter with chicken wire and fill it with moss so I can use loops of cottom rop to wick moisture out of the filter and end up with a moss wrapped, blooming filter cover, topped with hyacinths.

Photos to follow. Not real soon, but come they will.