June was a much easier month than May. My estimate of only 100 plants remaining in Blair Pond seems a bit low....

After harvesting over 30,000 plants in May, I revisited Blair on 6/6, 6/16, and 6/22. Plants harvested from the main pond there were 481, 281, and 118 plants on the respective dates. However, I also located another cove in Blair Pond hidden behind the sandbar and Purple Loosestrife. I harvested this additional area on 6/22 but only noted this area in the weight column as plants were quite well developed and heavily tangled.

Spy Pond was harvested on 6/3 and 6/16. Betty Radwanski from Somerville assisted in the removal of over 700 plants on 6/3. Almost all this was from the single site where they were seen last year. On the second date, 83 more plants were pulled - about 1/3 of these were found scattered along the western shore: apparently fragments floated away from the patch, since none of them were rooted.

Total weight harvested at both locations was 114 pounds in June. I scouted but did not harvest yet in Yates Pond. The patch there appears about twice the size seen last year, but is still constrained to a small area by abundant other aquatic vegetation. The length of Alewife Brook, Little River, and Little Pond were scouted, with harvest planned for July 8th - the same date as last year.

NO plants were seen in Alewife Brook or Little Pond, but several were spotted near Perch Pond and in the Little River. Untouched growth in Arlington Reservoir was just beginning to grow flower buds on 6/22, and I estimate that blooming has just now commenced, and seed will be mature by the end of July. I will endeavor to complete harvests in all my targeted areas well before any seed drop can occur. I see no problems in meeting this goal, and will be very excited to see how numbers drop in future years in Blair Pond.

In areas completely harvested last year, there appears to be a notable decrease in numbers, but some of this is surely due to the elimination of Blair and Spy Ponds as sources for fragments floating downstream.

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