This spring has been so warm, everything has come up and flowered at least two weeks early. You want to know what else came up two weeks early? The weeds! Black Swallow-wort, specifically. This is the weed I regard as pure evil. This is the weed that, left unchecked, fills hillsides with choking vines. This is the weed I wage war on every year. Just like last year, a few shoots turn up here, there, and within a couple days, everywhere.
The good news is that “everywhere” isn’t quite as bad as last year’s “everywhere.” The places where I dug up swallow-wort before aren’t nearly as thick with the stuff. And that’s the key: You have to dig this stuff up, and you have to get the crown of the roots. Then I wait about a month and get the survivors on the second pass. Each pass goes a little quicker. So after a bit of panic, I seem to have them under control.
And this is where I add the obvious sentence fragment: For now.
Writing Every Day 