Logically I understand that flood waters near the mouth of the La Crosse River take three or four days after a big storm to crest. The largest part of the La Crosse River watershed is miles upstream of the mouth, and it takes several days for the runoff from that watershed to make its way downstream. Still I am always surprised when it takes that long to happen. I live near the mouth of the river, and with every heavy rain, I expect the water levels to be at their highest immediately after the storm. I am caught off guard every time the river continues to rise well after the storm has passed.

I was caught off guard again today. I rode my bike to the La Crosse River Marsh, expecting to take the marsh trails all of the way to Riverside Park.* When I got there, significant stretches of the trails were underwater. Two days ago, which was one day after our last big storm, the trails were fine. Today they were impassable.

Ecologically, and I suppose urban planning-wise, this is exactly what is supposed to happen. The La Crosse River Marsh is the floodplain of the La Crosse River. When the river overflows its banks, the excess water fills the marsh instead of backing up into the city’s storm drains. As a recreation area with no permanent structures in the floodplain, the City closes the trails for a few days whenever the marsh floods, but no serious damage ever occurs. Sometimes the unpaved trails develop potholes, and this takes one parks employee with a shovel and a load of gravel a couple hours to repair.

I have perfected my bicycle route, and I don’t like it altered. The route begins at my house. I pedal a half mile to the marsh and then take the marsh trails to Riverside Park. From there, I bike south along the Mississippi River until I am ready to head for home. At that point, I leave river’s edge, travel inland about a mile, and find my way home by biking through residential neighborhoods. Depending on where I make my turn for home, I put in somewhere between thirteen and seventeen miles.

My ride was actually doubly disturbed today. Because I could not go into the marsh, I had to stay on high ground and bike through campus town. The streets there have bike lanes, but it is nothing like biking the pedestrian trails in the marsh. Then when I approached Riverside Park, I remembered that the week around the Fourth of July is Riverfest, La Crosse’s annual summer festival. During Riverfest, the park is closed to cars and bikes, so I couldn’t go there either. The two best parts of my bike route were closed to me.

After I returned home from my ride, Manyu and I went back to the marsh to get a better look at the flooding. I don’t know whether high water generally wakes up a wetland, but we saw wildlife that we don’t usually see in the middle of the summer. There was a northern water snake sitting on an island of duckweed. I thought it was stuck there, surrounded by water too swift for it to swim. I, however, had underestimated the snake’s abilities. It dipped its head in the water to test the speed of the flow, then slid entirely in and calmly swam away.

Our walk came to a stop when we reached a spot where water flowed over the trail. The six inches of water that covered the paved pathway was crowded with carp swimming in and out of the current. I googled “carp” and “moving water” when I got home. I learned that while carp lay their eggs in calm water, moving water triggers their spawning response. I am sure that these same carp spawned back in May, but the unexpected high water must have put them back in the mood. I was glad to see that at least something was enjoying the flooded marsh trails.

* Riverside Park is the gem of the city’s park system. Just a block from downtown La Crosse, it resides at the confluence of the Mississippi, La Crosse, and Black Rivers.

Each morning, usually about two hours in, my writing slows to the point where I feel the need to step away from the writing table. In the summer, I usually walk into my backyard to check out the gardens. I do not go there to water or pull weeds. I just go there to look. At this time of year, things can change in a day.

The most dramatic change is always with the squash and cucumber plants. Manyu likes kabocha squash, so I’m trying to grow that particular variety this year. With the cucumbers, I don’t remember what I bought. The seed carousel at the garden center had a half dozen varieties of cucumber that all looked the same to me, so I just grabbed one. I planted both the squash and the cucumbers along the back fence of my vegetable garden so their vines would have something to cling to. Once these plants encounter a vertical surface, their tendrils sometimes grow three or four inches in a day. I may have made a mistake in planting the squash along the fence, as the tendrils might not be strong enough to hold up the vines once they start producing fruit. From past experience, I know that the cucumbers will be fine.

Besides the squash and cucumbers, I also check out what I think are purple coneflowers.Two summers ago I planted coneflower seeds alongside the small strawberry patch in my vegetable garden. Something sprouted where I had scattered the seeds, and the leaves looked like coneflowers to me. Manyu thought that they were something else, some kind of weed, and she wanted me to pull them out. I convinced her to give the plants a chance. 

That first year the plants grew to be about a foot tall, but produced no flowers. Last summer I dug up most of the plants and moved them from the vegetable garden to three different spots in my flower beds.* That year the plants grew to about two feet tall, but still no flowers. Again Manyu asked me to pull them out, but I let them be. This summer the plants came back strong, and they all developed large green buds at the very tips of their stems. None of the buds have opened yet, even though other coneflowers in my neighborhood are already in full bloom. Every morning I look at the buds, hoping they’ve opened enough to prove Manyu wrong. So far nothing.

About a quarter of my vegetable garden is in cilantro, green onion, and chives. All are doing very well (the chives and onions are out of control), but because of Manyu’s current dietary restrictions we don’t use any of them to season our food. All gardeners give away some of their produce to friends. So far this year, we’ve given away everything.

* The coneflowers are a part of a grander plan to gradually replace most of my exotics with native species.