Early in September of last year, Bob Gaudreault, Kathleen Hugessen (moi) and Melissa Valiquette of the Conseil Regional de l'Environnement set forth from Bob's dock in Sally McDougall's rowboat (thanks, Sally!) to complete the inventory of our lake's aquatic plants.
Bob rowed us to Allan McDougall's dock, where the first round of inventory had ended (it had gone from Ken Hugessen's dock round to Allan's the year before). We picked up the trail there and Bob rowed the periphery.
By Outlet Bay, Melissa was in love. She called our lake her "coup de coeur", which I choose to translate as "sweetheart" lake. She found one clump of algae on the south(ish) side of Outlet Bay, but declared it filamentous, not cyano.
Bob and I spotted a very invasive looking plant that we insisted on rowing over to while Melissa sat quietly, suggesting it wasn't a plant at all. Well, we found the nefarious ropeweed. Fortunately, there were no further examples, and Bob and I offered no more opinions on Melissa's area of expertise.
Then she dropper her clipboard, with all her notes, into the water somewhere between Blachford's and us. We left Bob doing calisthenics on Ken's beach to re-establish contact with his hip, dodged over to my kayaks, and paddled off on a rescue mission. And, by golly, we found it! Furthermore, the clever girl uses waterproof paper and pencil!
I had, in a weak moment, mentioned that we had not looked at The Island and Melissa, now in the throes of a complete love affair with our lake, suggested strongly (OK, insisted) that we would be remiss in not completing the job.
Bob's hip was given a break and Melissa took over rowing. It should be noted that she does (did) not know how to row. Still and all, we reached The Island at which point Your Fearless Editor took up the oars. By Picnic Rock, Your Fearless Editor's back was doing much the same as Bob's hip. But perseverance won out and we made it to the campsite rock where Melissa, once more, took the oars.
While still circling The Island, Melissa became very excited and there was a certain amount of highly skilled maneuvering to get her above an aquatic plant of, apparently, great desirability. In an extremely athletic contortion, she manage to extract a sample and handed it with pride to Bob and me. "Smell it!" she crowed. So we did, looked at each other, shrugged and waited. "It smells like skunk!" she insisted. We weren't sure we agreed, but we smiled. God knows, she'd earned it.
Melissa got us back to Bob's dock (and is a much better rower for the effort), where we went our separate ways. The Saga of Lake Anne's Aquatic Plants is at an end. For now.
Bottom line: our lake is fabulous! (As if we didn't know.)
