It seemed like a good deal. We’d cut back the vines in exchange for rent.
We developed a technique – you mow, sort of – use a machete, cut the vines several times from high to low and then across the base right above ground. Push them over with your foot and start again from the top. The first year we did pretty well – cleared more than half an acre before spring, mostly from around the house. You could almost imagine a yard. A house with a yard. But I was worried, too, about paying the rent. We were getting it done too fast.
Late winter I started mowing the bare patch to keep the new shoots down. Took the mower out every few days, set it as high as it’d go and run it over the dirt. Found a lot of rocks. At the same time we went back to work swinging at the wall, cutting it back. The bottom of the vines here were tougher. The mower got into trouble when I tried to move into the new territory. It was taking hours. So I gave up mowing and just started weed whacking them down after I mowed. Every day, once spring really set in and the shoots started up. Turns out you don’t kill them at all when you cut them back like that. They just send out new shoots from the root.
You can imagine, it got to be something of a battle. I should have rented a backhoe but I guess I thought of it too late. We started digging at the roots and pulling them up. Then, as the weather warmed we saw something amazing. The roots sent out new shoots. The more we tore up the roots, the more they sprouted. Seemed every tiny bit of root we missed sprouted into a new plant. The large woody rhizomes we were pulled out became a fine mesh that permeated every bit of soil like a fungal net. with little green leaves at every edge.
I’d like to say we kept at it. And we did but frack we were doing this for eight hundred a month in rent. I know people blame me for what happened but I’m ok with that. I swear to god I saw one vine grow thirteen feet in one day and there were thousands. Our assault on the wall faltered while we fought to keep the ground we had taken and then one day the mower broke down. We’d hit too many rocks for the blades and wrapped too many vines around the shaft for the bearings and it basically seized up in a ball of smoke. I left it out there. They swallowed it up the next day, like they wanted it. It took me couple days to get a replacement but by then there was already no point, really. It became a defensive fallback from that point on.
I know you’re saying I’m ascribing intentionality to a plant. We want to see intentionality everywhere, like seeing the face in the flame, the old woman’s silhouette in the cliff face. Those plants came up through that mower and over it and they were wrapped around it’s wheels. The tires were already flat like they’d been eaten by mice. I didn’t even think about freeing it. We had bigger problems. Every one of those little shoots had sprung up to something thirteen to twenty feet long. They were back.
They headed for the windows.
I know “ the vines developed to a point where they lodge and the structure became involved”. Bullshit. There were vines all around the house and they were leaning every which way as long as that direction was the house. I started whacking vines back from the windows but they just seemed to keep coming. The baby’s room was first. We woke up one morning and the vines had grown up in his room like a bassinet. His crib was suspended in an egg shaped creche with razor sharp thorns. We crept in, took him from the crib and left. The fight was over.
The next night we spent on the couch. In the morning our room was gone.
It’s been several days. We appear to be at detente. The vines haven’t taken any more of the house. Almost like it was tit for tat. They haven’t moved up the hallway. We can still get to the bathroom. The vines inside the house aren’t getting a lot of sunlight. They’re yellow, spindly. Once winter comes and the cold, we’ll probably be able to take back the bedrooms.