Third Day

Today we talked to two wetland consultants from a Texas experimental wetland research center. They were really great people and they knew everything there was to know about aquatic vegetation. It was funny though, anytime we asked about anything outside the water, both experts were stumped! I'm talking not even a foot out of the water!

John has put Justin and I in charge of designing the plantings around and in a created pond and the surrounding jurisdictional upstream of it. The consultants gave us a whole bunch of advice on which plants to use and where, and they're gonna get us a list of species. I want to use a little bit of randomization on this one, since we're gonna be planting multiple species. The pond might be too small for that kind of stuff, but the contours around it might work.

One of the consultants planted twelve lily pads out in a backed up stream that had an illegally high pH. Six were planted in cages, six just out in the water. There were two kinds of cages with three of each, a small mesh crab wire cage and a larger mesh cage. They staggered it, one open one cage in a straight line with about 5 ft between them. They said the lilies, Nymphaea odorata, would grow almost across the whole area by the end of the summer.

After that we went and blew some grass clippings around with leafblowers. We're trying to establish native grasses, and for the planting to work, the seeds have to make contact with the soil. When the exotic grass was mowed, some patches were so thick with clippings that you couldn't see the soil, so we were trying to minimize that. Whew it got hot! But it was a cooler day today and its gonna get a lot hotter. Goodnight!