As soon as I read the prompt for this assignment, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. I took a walk down to the end of my street where a little swamp sat. When I got there, all the memories from my childhood came flooding back. Memories of sledding down hills in the winter while simultaneously trying not to slide into the swamp. Memories of laying in damp grass and gazing up at the stars at night. Memories of playing freeze tag in the rough brush that surrounded the waters’ edge. That swamp was one of my favorite places to visit when I was young.

One thing I always remembered about the swamp was that, in the summer, its clear water would cloud over with light green plants. I always thought they were kind of pretty. They had had long vines that snaked through the water and bright, yellow flowers that resembled butter cups. Since it’s starting to get warm in Delaware again, that same plant was growing back when I went but I had no idea what it was called, so, I texted my mom. My mom would often go down to the swamp to clear out weeds in the summer, so I asked her if she knew what the plant was called. It just so happened that she had spent the entirety of the summer of 2019 trying to clear out that very plant. It was an invasive species of aquatic plant called Water Primrose.

My mom informed me about how, since Water Primrose is an invasive species, it can be extremely bad for the ponds’ ecosystem. Water Primrose takes up the entire lake and steals oxygen from other, naturally growing, plants. Until she told that, It never even crossed my mind that such little plants could cause such big damage. It’s funny because I’ve lived in the same neighborhood my entire life and never knew what the plants that I’d been seeing since elementary school were called. There’s probably so many more interesting life forms living all around me that I also have no idea about. I think it’s really important to understand the ecosystems that function around us in order to better protects them. So, maybe since I have so much free time in quarantine, I’ll do a little bit more research on my own neighborhood nature.