JUNE 22, 2024 – Today I tangled with vines, both on the cove property and over in Byron and Mylène’s yard in Chester. I tugged and pulled, cut and clipped, and stumbled backwards each time one of three things happened: 1. The vine stem I was pulling on broke, 2. The whole vine came out by the roots, and 3. The multiple tentacles of a vine released their prey as I yanked on the main line.
The whole operation in Lyme began innocently enough in a side garden my sister had cultivated. As I strolled by it this morning, I couldn’t resist pulling out a few interlopers—weeds easily removed by their stalks, roots and all. Good for me. But then right in front of my nose was the alien weed, as in “from another planet,” that grows so fast it frightens me, an earthling. Exactly a year ago I thought it was an alien tree until my sister told me it was a weed but pointed out that I’d need a saw to cut it down. I did just that: I sawed the thing down at its base. Today, I realized, it had staged a comeback rising from zero to 10 feet. With pruning shears I cut it back to zero.
Having cut the mystery weed back down to size, I walked farther across the property in search of other opportunities to de-weed and de-vine. Soon all other cares had been put aside as I waged all-out war against vines. Several varieties have become all too comfortable snaking around “legitimate” shrubs and trees. One vine species poses as a shrub, but once it has established itself, its handsome stems become winding tendrils that coil around unwitting hosts. With my hands in tough gloves I liberated one area after another of the aggressive vines and ugly weeds.
Yet, for every linear meter I cleared, 10 more awaited. Plus, I knew that without regular follow-up maintenance, every single vine and weed that I removed would be replaced by an even more spirited version. Halfway through the operation I asked myself honestly, What is the point? Why are you doing this? and more to the practical point, Why isn’t our regular lawn guy doing something about all these Tarzan zones?
The reality is that to compensate for the total absence of vine control over the past half century, the vines have taken over along the borders. To eradicate the intruders now is more than a casual project. Beyond the garden and my clear-cut attack against the alien weed-tree, my efforts would go largely unnoticed and certainly unheralded. May the record reflect, however, that the cuttings were enough to have filled a small dump truck.
One would think I’d learn my lesson, since I repeat the vine-cutting patrol on every trip we make to Connecticut. Moreover, with the latest lesson so fresh in mind, one would think that I’d refrain from duplicating the effort a mere hour later—over in Chester. But compulsion overrides “lesson”: I just can’t stand to see a vine choking a shrub or worse, a tree.
In Chester, though, I’d been enlisted to plant a dogwood tree (after having planted the magnolia – See yesterday’s post.) Despite the extreme heat, I was able to work mostly in the shade. This dogwood project off to the side gave me a sense of accomplishment that injected fortitude into my fight against the vines.
Yet, however obscure my achievement, my vine fight gave me perspective on much else in life. As I pulled on one vine after another, I pretended that each vine stem was a falsehood, a looney tune, or simply a really bad idea in what’s passing for an election campaign this quadrennial. The world is full of lies and looney tunes and scruffy ideas, just as the boundaries of the cove house are covered with high-flying, tenacious vines; just as a boundary of the yard in Chester is dominated by tenacious vines.
Good vine control—and solid push-back against campaign balderdash—requires active resistance. In confronting lies and crazy talk, however, we can’t expect to uproot it all. In most cases, we have to settle for abeyance, not eradication. This is the lesson I drew from today’s double-duty vine patrol: we must persist and resist and not be discouraged when the vines return, seeking to suck the life out of desirable shrubs and trees.
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
