Tuesday morning, 9 a.m. walking Echo Park Lake clockwise, with Joan Valencia, Jindo the jindo dog (cultural treasure of South Korea #54), Rosie the mixed-breed dog (canine treasure of my household #1) and my daughter, Madeleine. Sunny and peaceful, everything looks a little fresh and charged because I know it will all change soon, when the lake is emptied, the grounds torn up for revamping. Right now, it's lovely even though there's a lot of garbage in the water, mostly pushed against the lake's edges. Joan tells me three muscovy ducks, with clipped wings, have been dumped at the lake recently, but they seem to be okay. They've survived three weeks, which is at least one test of time.

One of the paddle boats is moored by itself over by the island, odd since the concession is closed Tuesday mornings. The trout fry are getting bigger -- they're about two-three inches now. When we get to the lotus beds we see Dave Foster alone in a pink paddle boat, pedaling away. A different parks employee has the motor boat. When Dave lands at water's edge he tells me that someone has been dumping garbage from the park cans into the water. A couple of weeks ago, it was three cans' worth, then another three cans, and then this morning, they discovered that eight park garbage cans had been emptied into the water. "Someone doesn't like us," Dave said. "Maybe it's political," Joan said. "Well, we've got to fish it out." He doesn't look the least bit upset, though. I do believe Dave loves his job as keeper of the park. The conversation turned to ducks and to their diet of Chinese takeout food and oats and other things people dump in various places for the to eat. Piles of fried rice. The ducks are fat. And probably happy. A minute or two later, we come across the muscovies, sitting together in the shade of some shrubs. Just doing their jobs.