A Very Happy Client

Hi Jim. Things are progressing nicely. The strategy of picking the white blooms so as to eliminate the seed bank seem to have worked well. This is the first year I didn't have tons of white lilies coming up throughout the pond. I only have some whites growing where the yellows are. That is because it was so hard to ascertain the green leaves of the white mixed in with the yellow. Anyway, the problem is a lot more manageable and I anticipate eliminating 99% of the whites by Fall. I did not transplant any yellows this spring because I wasn't sure if all the whites were eliminated. However, I do have some pretty large blocks of volunteer yellows in other parts of the pond where the seed floated . Last year I made a point of marking with stakes some clusters that looked like yellows that we did not spray en mass. Sure enough, these were all yellows and I am shocked how much those small clusters grew this spring. Tremendous growth. Now I am protecting those so we have some good bases throughout the pond.Last winter the ducks really tore up the yellows. I noticed they pulled up a lot of roots, the ones that look like pine cones. I presume these can be transplanted and I plan to do that next spring right after the ducks leave. BTW I did get more variety of ducks this winter and will send you some pictures of that soon. Had about 75 ringnecks that came right at end of the season.Also, a service with an airboat came this morning and sprayed the full perimeter of the pond to kill back the encroaching cat tails. That cost $500, new guy in town trying to drum up business. He used "refuge" to spray the cat tails. Do let me know if you get another consulting job down this way as I would be interested in doing what we did last year and getting you to stop by for few hours.

Jim Davis

Had to send you this photo that I took yesterday. This is a small island of banana water lilies surrounded by a large expanse of water. You can see where all the gaddies are.