Peering into the water looking for a flash of light green pointing straight up, sometimes visible clearly on the bottom, sometimes hidden, just poking up from a mass of the aquatic plant Hydrilla, I reach with the cane hook. I slide it down the stem to the bottom, then a slicing sound, like cutting crisp celery.
It must be the hollow aluminum pole transmitting the sound from the depths. If the Phragmities shoot is fresh and well growing, it shoots up like a Polaris missile out of a submarine. Another reach with the cane hook; it's cane is dragged to the side and tossed into the canoe. I can tell how the work is going by how buoyant the stems are, some slowly rise, barely making it to the surface, the underwater cutting is working, the rhizomes are fading.
The wind drifts the canoe around, I am in the center of the pond now, drifting randomly like Brownian motion.
If you see someone like this, it is me removing Japanese Knotweed canes.