Belated Trip Report with Neighbor

Between weather, work, and activities, not much paddling going on. Two weeks ago, we geared up to go on our home lake, but on the morning of, Kathleen wasn't up to it. She suggested calling our next door neighbor, John. To my pleasant surprise, he said yes. This was his first time in a kayak. He took the more stable of the two. He took to it well.

Afterwards, I kicked myself for not bringing the camera. We saw a number of pretty flowers in bloom. Two stand out - an orangy trumpet-shaped flower that was rather small & delicate and quite abundant on the bushes - and a vine that profuse light purpley violet stems of flowers. We had seen the later floating on Buffalo Creek and wondered what produced it. And I was correct in my suspicion - it was kudzu!

John had a great time. As we were paddling up the creek, he was telling me that they're using a variety of grasses in wetlands to suck up and aspirate volatile chemicals and experimenting with a poplar hybrid with their deep tap roots for groundwater plumes. He's an environmental geologist that does polluted industrial site cleanup work.