stand left at the dam end, maybe twenty stalks.
Vern ran a new fence around my two acres, so his cows couldn’t get back in. He didn’t charge me for it. He said he had wire left over.
Then I started on the cattails.
I dug them from Grandpa’s old stand at the dam end. With a garden spade and a five-gallon bucket. You dig down around the root, which is thick and white and goes sideways under the mud. You lift
out a clump. You carry it to the new spot.
I set them along the bank one at a time.
On my knees in the mud.
It took me seven evenings after work. I’d drive out from Corning at seven-thirty, still in my scrubs, change into rubber boots in the Malibu, and dig until dark. By the end, I had cattails along the whole east bank, maybe forty feet, planted every eighteen inches.Identify Plants
