Nature's "Styrofoam" or Weird Thoughts

  The oddest thoughts bounce around in my head while I am out doing mindless tasks.  Such weird things filled the brain today as I cleaned out the little Frog Pond.  Or at least, while I attempted to clean the pond.  I did not finish as I found too many creepy crawlies at one point and decided to abandon the chore for a while.  I did, however, manage to yank out all of the Water Hyacinths.  This, in itself, was a daunting task. Over three hundred of these plants crammed the poor pond making it almost devoid of anything else.  For those who do not know, Water Hyacinths multiply at such a great rate that they are a leading cause of blocked waterways.  Just one of the plants can spread to thousands in a given year if there is enough space.  Let each of those multiply at the same rate and soon free-flowing canals come to a jolting halt.  Any life in the waterway will be suffocated and the whole place becomes a dead zone.  Not happy.  This is exactly why I am careful to not let any hyacinths reach the Bayou.  One can kill the whole ecosystem there. Mine go to the compost pile to be used as fertilizer.  Waste not...want not.

  Those Water Hyacinths are what started the cogs in the brain to dust themselves off and start churning.  Out of curiosity, I broke open one of the bulbous stalks to see just how the plant floats.  Duh....the inside looked just like Styrofoam.  I pondered if whoever invented the craft foam studied the Water Hyacinth to come up with their idea.  Inside the stalk of the hyacinth, the pulp was quite funky looking.  Tiny pockets of air were surrounded by a firm fiber.  These pockets of air are what keep the plant afloat.  I squished the stem and, lo and behold, it sounded like Styrofoam, too!  This all made me wonder if there was something useful that could be made from the plant.  A bit of investigation answered that question rather quickly.  Nope!  Other than becoming ideal fertilizer for the garden, the plants are most useless.  I had thought that perhaps the stem could be dried and used as a flotation or as a filler but it seems as if the pockets turn to mush after a few days of being out of the water. Once the plant dies, it literally rots rather quickly.  This does help with the composting but would be quite problematic if one was trying to retain the form for some other use.  Water Hyacinths are not a crafty medium!

  After my rather uneventful study of the plant, I pondered why they multiply with the rapidity they do.  It seems that Water Hyacinths do not use a lot of sense...which stands to reason since they do not have brains.  But, still, to multiply so much that you are killing yourself  seems rather stupid.  The plants keep on reproducing even to the point of piling one on top of the other.  The lower ones eventually die but that does not hinder the others.  Perhaps the dying ones are used as protein for the newer plants but what it the use of that?  Once a waterway becomes completely clogged even the Water Hyacinths die.  All of that reproducing eventually kills out the whole lot.   Geez...

  Then came another weird thought.  Why are we in this nation so adverse to making use of what we have on hand?  Why, since these plants do multiply so rapidly, has somebody not come up with the brilliant idea of making nature-friendly fuel from them?  In some other countries, the plants are used as fuel and then the residue (ash) is turned into fertilizer.  It seems as if this would be a no-brainer and would be a relatively cheap process.  The Water Hyacinths are plentiful and are definitely self sustainable.  Then again, these are all just stupid thoughts from someone growing weary of pulling the hyacinths from the Frog Pond.........Other thoughts.  Why do I keep leaving any Water Hyacinths in the pond if I just have to yank out hundreds upon hundreds each year?  Why are there so many weird critters in my Frog Pond?  Why do I even have a Frog Pond?  Yep....odd thoughts.