For over a year now I have been at war with a most stubborn enemy, Wisteria. Wisteria is a bane, curse and utterly evil thing. For a few moments a year it yields beautiful purple flowers. Those flowers are the disinformation department of the Wisteria conspiracy, trying to convince us that Wisteria is worthy and should be unmolested if not actually nurtured and coddled. But those flowers are a lie.
What is actually happening is that Wisteria is climbing every tree for miles around and choking them to death. In the canopy the vines spread and compete with the host tree’s leaves for sunlight. Given enough time the host tree grows weak and the weight of the Wisteria vines and foliage bend and break the limbs of the tree. But that is only what happens above ground. The roots spread like a pandemic underground and will attack the foundation of your drive and home. Every so often the roots also send up vines to try to find other trees to kill. They will even attack your house, carport or gazebo.
Worst of all, Wisteria is hard to kill. Cut it off and the roots send up 50 new vines. Try to dig it up and you will be pulling its evil roots over much of your yard. As you pull, it will break leaving behind one tiny sliver of itself to rise again like an unkillable zombie. In the fall and winter you might feel you have won the battle and in the spring you find it coming back with a vengeance. What a few cancer cells are to the body a little Wisteria is to the yard.
If you don’t want to surrender to the destructive power of Wisteria you will have a long and relentless fight. Currently, I am in the chemical warfare stage of the battle. With spring the new sprouts are popping up. I welcome these innocent, delicate looking thirsty little sprouts with a strong mixture of the most potent herbicide on the legal market. People say plants respond to gentle voices, so I sweetly tell the little plants, “Oh, little one, you look thirsty. Let me give you a drink.” Then I blast them with poison. The next phase of the fight is to find where the most and strongest sprouts are growing up. Dig there till I find the tap root, dig a small cavity and fill it with straight toxin so it can share this magical fluid.
“Obsessive” you say, “over wrought” someone else adds. Say what you like, for me there is an endless war on Wisteria. “Death to Wisteria! We shall never willingly surrender one inch of tree bark, one clump of red clay, one drop of Miracle Grow fertilizer to this cancer of southern woods. LONG LIVE THE TREES!”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said: “When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.” I will leave it to you to draw your own comparisons between the battle with the flesh and my battle with Wisteria. But know this for a certainty, those who say or teach that the life of faith is a life of ease, comfort and relaxation has not taken seriously the power of the flesh.
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