We had an absolute light show
Two nights ago
It was worthy of poetry far better than anything I can compose. So I’ll just supply the pictures.
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In my wanderings around the garden, I’ve been noticing a lot of invasive plants, one in particular that seems to be taking over this year. Technically, the one I’m referring to, wild grape, is not “invasive”, because it’s native to New York. However, it grows like wildfire, climbing trees and looping it’s way through the branches.
One day when I went up to the apple tree, I suddenly noticed that the whole area looked different to last year. It was because this vine was everywhere. My property ends at that tree line, but still it bothered me.
Here’s the wretched thing.
It even grows out over the meadow, tangling in whatever it comes across and pulling it down.
My mother would declare war.
But it’s not that simple.
Grant said, and the internet concurs: cut the plant off at ground level and it will die.
How am I going to do that:
I would be at it the rest of my life.
The resolution I think I’ve arrived at, is to wait until I’m sure no nests will be disturbed and then pull down what I can. Next Spring I’ll be more watchful and nip what I can in the bud. Literally. What else can I do?.
There’s actually other, real invasive species, down in the meadow. This is one: spotted knapweed.
There is a ton of it everywhere and it too is thriving this year. But it’s got pretty flowers.
And here it doesn’t seem to be hampering anything.
It’s just that I see it spreading everywhere.
There’s a lot of honeysuckle on the hill, (which isn’t mine): the bees like it!
There’s also autumn olive and garlic mushroom and probably plenty more.
And then there’s plain old weeds. Every time I go down the driveway I bend and pull out a few handfuls, but why? There is no way I can get them all up, and do a few at a time make a difference? So why do I bother? It’s like the battle I used to do back in Washington, with dandelions. Poor pretty flowers!
It was an obsession. Had to get the dandelions out of the “lawn”.
Lawn? It was a patch of grass, mostly weeds. What was I doing, besides wasting time and energy that I didn’t have? Exercise is all very well, but I used to cavort about on that steep hill behind my house for two hours, some days and end up shattered.
On the hill, I was pulling stinging nettles, which was another useless, often painful pastime.
The hill was covered in ivy and periodically I got a foot caught and fell down. If I had been in charge of me, I would have said “come down from there, you stupid woman!” Was I trying to get myself hurt?
Back then, perhaps I was. I never told my therapist about my adventures on the hill, not in detail, anyway. I have always been very good at falling, however. Never had one I didn’t get up from.
Here is something cool, from that old garden.
Baby birds in May 2013. They may have been robins I’m not sure.
My fabulous hill, with friendly visiting bunny.
I had invasive plants there too. It was all out of control.
The black tubing was left over from the foster “suite”. We discovered raccoon babies loved it.
What the hill needed was a water feature.
So, I got a waterfall installed, but I should have been more careful when choosing a project manager.
In the end it functioned as a pond, for the wildlife.
Of course I’d had a bird bath:
Somehow it got dismantled.
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But I gave it all up to come back East, where we can see the sky:
That’s how it was, 2 nights ago.
The pink and blue sky is lovely! Do the wild grape vines produce any fruit? If not, I would do as
Grant suggests. Just cut the main branches close to the ground and don’t bother pulling them down from the trees. They will die. I have a wretched vine that I have no idea what it is that is taking over my back fences. It does have beautiful red berries on it in the fall, but I wish it wasn’t there. I am constantly cutting sprigs of it close to the ground. I’m not making much headway, but at least I’m doing something.
I think it gets very small grapes. Maybe the birds eat them. We can only do so much!