Hardiness: Place Post No. 7

The lake has shed it skin for another winter. Sunlight shines on the ridged surface this afternoon, and I think that the gulls bobbing on the water look like small, white boats or dutch shoes floating in the distance. In just a matter of weeks it feels like winter has come and gone, and yet there's still a feeling of harsh cold in the air. I wonder if the wildlife below notices something similar? I know that fish like rough water, still, beautiful days above the surface do nothing for for the fisherman or woman.
I still see only dead plants, and a few birds, but no abundance of animals (or people). We've made it through the winter, but where is everyone?

The trees are beginning to send out small knobs of brown buds, and I can't wait to see the green life that sprouts from them. Their barren branches are now familiar, but they're not as inviting as the fullness of color is. Is the algae and other underwater greenery undergoing a similar process? Do these things live and die and move in cycles like the same things above water? I know the water grows its own furry covering sometimes in the late summer, but that's just what I can see. The filamentous algae covers the wooden legs of the dock with a mustardy yellow throughout the summer but is absent now; but what's it like underwater? Is the curly-leaf pondweed flourishing (I scout it out online and learn that it is, but will die back in the summer)? We don't have to worry about the invasive Eurasian watermilfoil in Walgren, but I know it exists in rivers throughout the south-central region of Nebraska.

I don't think we have Zebra mussels here, like Yankton county, South Dakota, so that's one less lifeform to worry about. But for all of those that should be here that didn't make it or don't, how many of the bad guys do? How many survive our winters (the zebra mussel comes from the Caspian so it should love the cold)?

I don't think about the wildlife that I know as invasive--he plants I see, the animals.. pheasants are not native to our country either--in much the same way I don't think about how hard it is for other life forms to make it through the winter. But as spring creeps around the corner and curiosity blossoms, how much will I begin to think about the existence of these things, and mine, relative to them?