Fresh Water Lily Memorial
By Don Doucette
Photographer: Alyssa Kim
Those closer to me understand my feelings concerning the proliferation of invasive plants – my personal study toward understanding these pests and my concern for proper methods to safely rid ourselves of these harmful invaders.
As well, tolerated exotic plant introductions must “know their place” and refrain from overtaking our environment, I am somewhat more tolerant, but even then, given a choice, favor native plant types any day.
There is in our Ten Mile River Watershed a small body of fresh water seemingly without inflow or outflow and therefore reasoned as a spring fed pond. And if in fact a spring fed pond, might be without recognition, our first historic source for fresh public drinking water within the Ten Mile River Watershed.
The pond mentioned has been walled and contained within the historic Ring of the Green cemetery bordering the Newman Congregational Church in the Rumford section of East Providence, Rhode Island.
Rumford (early Rehoboth) was chosen as a primary historic early settlement location because of surrounding water resources, mainly the curving Ten Mile River along with the close proximity of tidal Narragansett Bay. And too, an ample supply of flat sand plain soils suitable for intensive gardening – fresh water and food being basic needs of any human society.
And the specific placement for our historic Ring of the Green hub, an original freshwater spring. Today, mainly a small body of water hardly noticed or heralded, our Newman Church Pond in the cemetery.
And prior to the formal settling of the Ring of the Green, our native cousins drank from that same freshwater spring for thousands of years of unrecorded history.
And…placed at the lower end of that small Ten Mile River Watershed spring fed pond, a modest planting of exotic water lilies positioned in situ by some unknown gardener and with their everlasting water lily flowers about to bloom, possibly and unknowingly, a memorial of beauty to those who came before us and first recognized the importance of our first formal public drinking water supply.
My regards,
Don Doucette
“Ten Mile River Rambles”
Friends of the Ten Mile