The Battle Against the Terrible Invasive Species

Today was a day of epic battle. A day of terror and triumph. The day I decided to go cut down some of the motherfucking invasive species on my land.

Namely bush honeysuckle and multiflora rose. Bush honeysuckle being exactly what you would picture it being, a giant bush of honeysuckle. At this point you might also be wondering why I would want to remove it. It's honeysuckle, Everybody loves honeysuckle, the sweet smelling the flowers, the soft leaves, the nostalgia of a favored grandma keeping some in the back garden. Except that the kind that you remember was most likely the native vine honeysuckle, you know, the one where you can pull out the stamen and get a drop of pure nectar on your tongue.

The thing I'm talking about is an invasive demon bush from hell.

The thing about bush honeysuckle is that it wants your meadows. All of them. Here is a picture of it.

Give me your meadows, I have teh hunger.

It will eat up all the space you have and then some. Cows and horses won't touch it, and the cattle farm at the end of the road has a huge field that is nothing, nothing but bush honeysuckle. So I decided it was time for it to die.

Armed with a pair of clippers* I spent my day removing this devil plant from my fields. And woods. And meadows. And any other damn place I could find it. This was all practice though, a mock battle if you will, for the true horror of my day. A plant that makes strong men weep and brave men cower.

Mulitflora Rose. You demon bitch you.

Try to contain your frantic screams. It can no longer hurt you.

The thing you have to understand is that multiflora rose is a member of the rose family and it has thorns. Real, sharp curved thorns. I would let the bush honeysuckle live if it was along the road, and out of my way, but I single handily fought every single mulitflora rose I found. If left unchecked, this demon plant will take over as well spreading it's evil monoculture as far as the eye could see. I found it spreading along the ground, I found it climbing up the sides of trees, and I found giant bushes of this stuff. It was everywhere and it was very, very sharp.

Let me tell you something right now. Bush honeysuckle will accept it's fate and die quietly. Multiflora rose goes down kicking a screaming and failing. It hit me in the face and snaked it's evil tendrils around my legs and back and tried to trip me, and on multiple occasions cut right through my leather work gloves like they were made of cotton candy.

Fighting back multiflora rose was a lot like what I always thought fighting a dragon would be like, if the dragon couldn't breath fire for some reason.

Actually, it more like that scene from Lord of the Rings where Gandalf fights the Balrog, but specifically that bit where they land in the water and it's evil flame is extinguished because I was cutting right after it had rained.

Yeah like that.

Okay. Look, if anybody you know is all like 'hey I should plant some multiflora rose in my garden', you should fucking tackle them. I don't care if you are in the goddamned plant isle at the Lowes, you motherfucking tackle them because we can't let the mutiflora rose win you guys. We can't let it win.

I thirst for your blood puny human.

 

* I know I won't be able to remove it entirely, but my goal is only to mange it, not to eradicate it. Because eradicating it would mean salting the earth so nothing would ever grow again.