Childhood tales come to life

This is wisteria.

This is Sigmund, a Sea Monster.

I see some definite similarities here, although my personal monster is land-based, not sea-based.

Unchecked, wisteria can rapidly take over its own space and then make designs on the space all around it. It’s great at embracing empty space you have you don’t plan to fill any time soon. At the time I put it in, I didn’t have any grand designs for the front garden area. When I did get those plans in my head, each season involved cutting it back. Severely. Mercilessly.

And it kept coming back, its tentacles running again, either along the ground or hanging on the rabbit fence and pulling it outward as the mass of stems followed along, feeling their way along, looking for something to grasp and to root it before sending out another runner to declare to the next space that more stems would be following in its track.

I’ve done some checking of it, cutting off many of the tentacles reaching out to invade all the other areas of the north garden just to be able to move among the raised beds in the general area where it sits and contemplates how to proceed to eventually become a small planet unto itself. The goal is to remove the entire plant. It would be much less problematic if the flowers held an aroma that was not offensive an smelled like wet, sweaty, mildewy gym clothes that had never been washed. But they do, and although the bumblebees seem to love it, the humans who have to work around it do not.

We have another variety whose flowers hold a scent much more agreeable, and that one will replace this one, without offending the noses of the people attempting to work in peace and harmony beside it. And so it goes at the ranch…

Until next time, peeps: be well.