Wednesday, January 18

cutting down the monster

Spent all yesterday in hot sun, cutting down this horrible strangling creeper that was colonising several trees.

Each tendril is yards long, dotted with cluster bomb colonies at intervals. If you try and just tear it down, either the tendrils snap or the bomb colonies fall to the ground and break apart into separate tubers, that roll away into gaps, where they sprout hundreds of new plants. Like metastatic cancer.

So you have to take them by stealth, either unravelling each strand individually (too slow) or chop down all the affected tree parts, then dismantle the spaghetti on the ground.

It would have been dispiriting work, except I was fuelled by hatred of the stuff. And I had enough ladders and useful equipment.



3 comments:

  1. Well done you for rescuing those trees. Those strangling vines are terrible things.

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  2. Nanners, aye I've just about finished the job now, after several days. All that remains is to go back in a month or two, when the bomblets I missed will have sprouted and will be visible. Constant vigilance is the name of the game, and the lack of it caused the present infestation.

    Hotters. You might eat them if they're hallucinigenic.

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  3. I say!

    A job that Cabbage would relish. He was good at chopping, cutting and thrusting. A shame that we had to let him go.

    MM III

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