A Metaphor from My Garden

For quite a few years now, I've been battling an invasive vine in my yard. Its Latin name is Cayratia japonica, and it's commonly known as bush killer vine. Those who live a little farther north than me (but still in the South) speak with awe of another invasive vine called kudzu, that legend has it will grow feet in a day. Cayratia is a completely different vine from kudzu, but in far southern areas of Texas and Louisiana, this vine grows just as fast as kudzu and will choke out desirable shrubs and trees. 

Cayratia japonica seems to be related to poison oak (maybe). If you pull too many of them with your bare hands, your hands will begin to sting like fire, and washing off the sap from the vine won't make it stop. So, always wear gloves when you pull this stuff.

It also has clusters of little white flowers that look a bit like Queen Anne's Lace. They're kind of pretty, actually, and you might like them if the plant weren't choking out something you want to live. The flowers attract bees and wasps -- pollinator plant! But that also means you need to pull these vines either early in the morning or near dusk, when the bees and wasps aren't active, or you risk getting stung by wasps that are angry that you're pulling up their lunch.

The Cayratia in my yard targeted two fig trees that had been in place for more than twenty years. Because of other plants, also invasive, that would grow up at the base of the fig trees during the warm months, it became impossible to wade in there and pull the vines up. The fig trees stopped producing. I finally had to throw in the towel and have the trees removed. That was last year. My husband has been bombing the area where the Cayratia still grows with a brush killer. Every few weeks last summer he'd repeat the process. But it keeps coming back. 

So I pull vines and he sprays.

It occurs to me that this invasive vine, that keeps coming back even as we work to eradicate it, is a metaphor for something far more sinister: systemic racism. That evil thing that was around when I was growing up as a child in New Orleans in the 1960s has never gone away. It just keeps coming back, despite efforts to eradicate it. We can't give up and let it take over. We have to keep going.

Video:

By the way, I took cuttings from the fig trees before I had them removed. I now have fig trees in pots, genetically identical to the ones that were removed. I keep hoping that the Cayratia will finally be eradicated and I can plant new fig trees. Or if not, that I can plant them somewhere in the yard where the vine has not yet taken over. There's a metaphor there, too.

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