An ode to bindweed

My dear bindweed
You truly are my friend
Our friendly game of hide and seek
will surely never end
You hide among my favourite plants
and make me crawl to seek you
I spray you with my round up gun
like you know I'm going to

But that is not the end for you though
As in my flowerbed I know you'll grow
You know you're not on my invite list
But please come anyway, I insist
For without your presence, what would I do?
Life would be simple, if not for you.

What a tough opponent you really are
You've grit and determination
You're evil tendrils spread so far
You're a bit above your station
Our battle will ensue for years to come
And one day I'll get weary
But the day will come when you are gone
And that day I'll be cheery

Clueless1, June 2009

 

Fantastic and so so true

 

:tnp::tnp::tnp: Class, Clueless ...

 

Theres a poem in all of us.
I guess thats it from clueless!
:cl-p::cl-p::cl-p::cl-p::cl-p::cl-p:

 

Very good, clueless

cheers

 

Very apt just now. We were down at in-laws again this afternoon and I was dealing with more bindweed (which I discovered has crept in from their next door neighbours).

 

Periwinkle, its interesting you should note that. Oddly enough I knew nothing about bindweed until just a few years ago. I didn't need to know, as it was never a problem for me in the past, and I never really saw it about much (ok I did see it from time to time, but not often enough to give it much thought). Nowadays it seems to be everywhere. I wonder if it might be because, with the exception of winter just gone, we haven't had a real winter for years.

I saw a program on tv once about some wildlife on an island just off the east coast of Scotland, and the one type of bird were dropping in number. This bird builds its nest underground, and turned out their numbers were dropping because larger birds were attacking and killing them. The larger bird in question had always been there though, so this was a puzzle to the scientists. Then one day someone noticed some weed or other was flowering early, and further study found that the local climate conditions had altered in recent years to be about 1 degree centigrade warmer than 10 years ago, and this 1 degree change made the difference between the weed roots being frost damaged every winter, thus keeping the plant under control, to the weed surviving winter undamaged and getting off to a better start the following spring. It turned out that because of this, the birds that were being attacked were finding it harder to find their way into their nests when an attack came, thus making them more vulnerable. It just goes to show that a seemingly minor change in conditions can have a massive and almost immediate effect on the local ecology.