Imagine my dismay to hear that the fragrant waterlily is considered a weed because of its super-duper abilities to infest lakes that have extensive shallow areas. Such as Lake Washington around Foster Island, judging from the bumper crop of white blobs I see from the 520 bridge. I’m pretty certain there’s at least twice as many there this year as there was last year.

Gosh, I think it’s be-yooo-ti-ful to see fields of waterlilies blooming as far as the eye can see. The whole world is probably mad at me for saying that, seeing as how, wherever waterlilies grow, you can’t swim, or canoe, or fish, or water ski. And that’s just humans. On the flip side (underneath those foot-wide leaves), oxygen levels get low, and that’s just a huge turn-off for everything in the water, except for algae and bacteria. Yummy!