A Week in Photos

Environmental League of Massachusetts Young Environmentalist Program (YEP) walk with walkBoston (For more information about YEP click here and for more information about walkBoston click here

(post work kayaking with my fellow intern, Ingrid)

Friday... to be continued

In Recollection: Water Chestnut Pulling

Hello readers!

It's been a couple of busy weeks at CRWA!

Last Sunday was the first public water chestnut pulling event. Thinking I was in a for a fun day of community (or river) service, I told Anna, our water chestnut coordinator, that I would be happy to help out at the event. Little did I know that water chestnut removal was back-breaking, hand-aching work. Here is a list of things I learned during the weed pulling event:

1. Water chestnuts really do form thick mats with long root systems that are often  tangled in other plants' root systems. In other words, when one attempts to pull out a single water chestnut plant, many other plants are pulled up with it. In some cases, the water chestnut "chains" were so long that one pull filled an entire basket.

2. Water chestnuts are very sharp. If one does not wear proper protective garments (sturdy shoes and gloves) one can be scratched by the water chestnut fruits.

3. One bottle of water is not sufficient for a four hour weed pull

4. Weeding can, in fact, be fun.

I would like to thank all the volunteers who joined us on Sunday.  In hot, muggy weather, with the sun beating down on them, they worked hard to fill as many baskets of water chestnuts as possible. 

While water chestnut pulling is hard work, I encourage everyone reading this to join us on our weed pulling event on July 19th (click here for more information about our weed pulling program). I promise we will have a lot of fun and will see river-dwelling creatures, like great blue heron, turtles, fish, frogs, and birds.

Have a sunny week!
Cait

P.S. Photos of Sunday's event can be found on our Facebook page
P.P.S. The 2012 flagging (click here for more information) season started this week. I will be writing about that as the season progresses

Water Chestnut Mapping

These last two weeks have been especially busy. 

Last Friday, Intern Evan and I attended Gardner Pilot Academy’s Friendship Feast, a gathering of students, teachers, parents, and siblings to celebrate their school, their community, and the end of the school year. We presented our Watershed in a Box. While I do not want to spoil the surprise of learning about the Watershed in a Box in real life, I will say that we had a lot of fun (and made many messes) teaching the Gardner community about watersheds. 

On Wednesday, Ingrid, Bruce and I completed our weekly water testing in the pouring rain. I like to think that we had a fun time even though we were cold and wet.

Yesterday (Thursday), I mapped water chestnuts with Don, a CRWA volunteer, from a canoe, using an iPad app called MeasureMap (For more information about the app, click here). In some cases, we had to paddle through dense water chestnut patches to reach the proper spot. While the paddling on the open water was slightly taxing, paddling through the water chestnuts was one of the most difficult physical feats I have ever undertaken. A few times, we were paddling hard and not moving.  It was interesting to see how widespread and dense the patches were. (For those of you who do not know, water chestnuts grow in dense mats, blocking sunlight from reaching the native vegetation below. For more information about water chestnuts click here). 

 Stuck in water chestnuts

Even though the canoeing was difficult, I enjoyed spending the morning in the field, especially since it was a beautiful sunny day. We saw a lot of wildlife, including a few fish, a lot of birds, such as a blue heron and a family of geese, many insects, especially lady bugs, and a turtle. 

 Lady bugs on a yellow water lily

The Final Push for Water Chestnuts!

Hi everyone,

This is the last week that water chestnut removal events will be running! There are two remaining public events this week: Wednesday, July 27th (today!) 5-8pm and Saturday, July 30th 9 am - 1 pm. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact me at waterchestnut@crwa.org!

I can't believe how quickly it this month has gone by. Running the water chestnut events has been so much fun and so rewarding. We have definitely made some progress on the river! In some smaller areas, the water chestnuts have been cleared away completely. In the areas that would be impossible to clear by hand, it is encouraging to see that we are still clearing a noticeable area and preventing the plants from starting new colonies downstream. I hope the volunteers have had as much fun as I have had participating in this project!

Here are a few photos from the water chestnut season...enjoy!

- Alison

Water Chestnuts Galore!

Hi everyone! I have some great news to share. Thanks to a generous matching grant, applied for by Charles River Canoe and Kayak and funded by the state, as well as the wonderfully large expression of interest in the program from the public, the CRWA has decided to expand the 2011 program!

There will now be two additional public events:

Wednesday, July 27th - 5:00-8:00 pm
Saturday, July 30th - 9:00 am - 1:00 pm

There will also be the availability for individuals or smaller groups to volunteer on Wednesdays between 1:30 and 8:00 p.m. and Fridays between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

Please e-mail the Water Chestnut Program Intern at waterchestnut@crwa.org for more information!

-Alison