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urbpan
Alexis on a business call. For some reason we can't get good cell phone reception in our house, so to make or receive important calls we go out in the yard--sometimes I'll hop in the car and drive to CVS and make an errand of it.
My dad came up for the day, and he had a mission: He wanted to go to the house that one of his aunts lived in when he was a child. He spent many visits there, taking the bus from New Hampshire to Boston, then out to the small city of Waltham. His uncle ran a business out of the house, renting motorboats on the Charles River. I'm pretty familiar with Waltham, but I hadn't been to this weird little corner of it. In its day, Waltham was a thriving industrial city, but like every else in the US, manufacturing dwindled, and now it's a suburb for people who work in Boston, and increasingly an area where tech companies are settling. Here is a former factory, now a lattice for Boston ivy and a planter for sumac or Ailanthus.
We found the house, and my father spoke to the grandchildren of his aunt, who were very kind and gracious. Imagine answering the door of your secluded riverbank home to find a pair of weird men, one with an eyepatch and ponytail, the other one--well, me. My dad got the contact info for his aunt, and we explored the area. The motorboat business was long gone, but people still like to pleasureboat on this part of the Charles.
And who can fault them? Sure is pretty this time of year. And will get prettier in the next couple weeks.
This bend of the Charles is called Purgatory Cove. We noticed some thick vegetation in the water, I suspected invasive species.
Near the shore, Eurasian water milfoil.
Do you see the black object at the front of this Canada goose?
Steve Hurst @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database
It's one of these--the seed capsule from invasive water chestnut.
The pod is called a caltrop, owing to the sharp points on it; this goose has several stuck into its feathers. When I googled Purgatory Cove I found this blog post concerning a need to clean the cove of such invasive plants. The post also mentions that river otters and eagles have been seen there! I'll have to come back.
