That’s capitalized that way because it refers to a specific area; we have three ponds, interconnected, and the southernmost one (which we only own half of) resembles nothing more than a bayou, so that’s how we refer to it. Up until this morning, I’d only seen it from the marshy banks at the northern tip, which allowed a limited perspective, but today I took the kayak down into it for a better view.
Now, a note about this: While the three ponds are interconnected, it’s loosely. The upper pond connects to the main one behind the house by a narrow channel that we built a small bridge across, that if it weren’t for the bridge I might be able to navigate with a kayak, but only just. One of these days I’ll simply put the kayak in from the bank. The main pond behind the house is relatively easy to launch the kayak into and I’ve done it a couple of times, but it’s shallow and entirely visible from the banks so there’s not a lot of reason to. This connects to The Bayou by a very narrow channel that I watch the ducks navigate, but I was never sure that it wasn’t more of a marshy border area than a channel. Today I determined that it was indeed very shallow, enough to prevent paddling through it but the kayak could be ‘poled’ through by pushing against the bottom (which is thick enough mud that wading it would be quite difficult.) Yet I made it through, and took a few pictures while down there.
There’s not a lot to say about these, so I’ll just be clarifying which way we’re facing, in this case south deeper into The Bayou. The main tree in this pic was probably the one seen in that linked post above. Most of these are bald cypress trees (Taxodium distichum) and quite large, the canopy of which prevents a lot of sunlight entering at any time of the day.
Deeper into The Bayou but still facing the same way. I didn’t poke the paddle down to see how deep it was, but judging from the lack of yellow cow lilies, it was deeper than the main pond behind the house. Though this might only have been from the minimal sunlight.
This is turned around now and facing towards the main pond; the channel that serves as the link isn’t really visible at this low angle, but sits way back there under that shadow to the left.
If it wasn’t such a bear to get the kayak in there, I’d do this more often – quite a peaceful and evocative place. I like the single cypress paired with the absolute cluster of them here, and don’t ask me how this occurred.
No easy way to show scale, or even to measure it myself, but this is a monster tree – or maybe not, and it only seems that way because it’s visible bottom to top, unlike most of the others. This is pretty close to the connecting channel now, but that’s out of view off to the right.
Going a little fartsy here, but these white water lilies (Nymphaea odorata) were conspicuous in their solitude – this is the only example of them that we’ve seen on any of the ponds. The Girlfriend wants me to transplant these to the main pond, and I can’t blame her, since these are much nicer looking that the yellow cow lilies, but they may not be able to compete well. Still, we might just buy a handful of them and try to get them established.
Notably, I saw no ducks, no wildlife of any kind, while down there, which was curious. That was a large part of the reason why I ventured down there, but that’ll be a topic for a later post, or perhaps a few of them. For now, we get scenic pics.