Even with her bath Tuesday evening, I'm still picking little specks of dried algae out of Ella's fur. It's like someone sprinkled her with diced parsley.

If I smell a backyard grill, I'm not letting her out of my sight.

We like to take Ella to a dog beach on Lake Michigan, a couple of miles from our apartment. The temperature was in the high 80s yesterday, so I tossed Ella in the car late in the afternoon and we headed east to Lincoln Park. Unlike the past few summers, the water at the beach there has been crystal clear all season, so I didn't stop to look at it before letting Ella run around in it.

When she emerged, her legs were green.

The water at the people beach still looked pretty good, but at the dog beach the water, once you stopped to look at it, was opaque with algae. You couldn't take a step without the dark green soup billowing in a cloud around your feet. When we left, people were amazed to see the dog with the skinny green legs trotting along. Thank goodness she's only a wader and not a swimmer.

I didn't take a picture of her green legs, but here she is in the opaque water: