I moved into an apartment with an attached, walled-in garden. The former tenant, a crackhead rock star who still gets lots of junk mail, had ignored this garden. Aside from a healthy tree, the only plant growth was a gnarly assortment of weed species. I like weeds as much as the next guy, but they’re ugly. What’s worse, they die at fall’s first frost, leaving just mud all winter. Weeds are the original fair-weather friends. I expect more from my relationship with plants; I’m a year-round kinda guy. That’s when I met English Ivy, a sensible plant you can count on like a balanced portfolio of sound investments.
Even the name makes me feel good. English Ivy. Ivy from England. “Pass the marmalade, please.” Its long, twisty vines produce leaves that can survive even a cold winter. The dark green color harkens back to Winston Churchill. English Ivy is the Ricky Martin of the vine world. Given enough time, a single stalk will expand to cover a football field, sending out long, adventuresome vines of opportunistic leaves to hunt every square inch of sunshine. In ten years, English Ivy could probably swallow a house or a fallen moose.
A local plant nursery sold me a “swag” of Ivy. I planted the stalks in my weedy garden and watered them and nurtured them daily, dreaming of a day when they would dominate the unruly plant kingdom. For the first two years, the English Ivy really needed help, like affirmative action. The weeds weren’t very nice and didn’t give up easily.
Nowadays, it’s the weeds that beg for mercy. The English Ivy has prospered like the human race. It’s vanquished most of its former predator neighbor plants and looks poised to populate every corner of the garden. A few of the bolder vines are tentatively stretching upwards from the ground towards the sun, to scale a wall or an iron railing. The upstairs neighbors will be swallowed soon, which would be nice.
The weeds, my former, flighty friends, are still around, though not as often. I sometimes allow a few of them to grow for a few weeks, or even for the whole summer, but they all die in November, leaving just me and my Ivy. There may come a day when I wish to introduce another species of plant into the garden; that will first require the Ivy’s permission.
Looking even further into the future, the political climate may change. Discrimination against weeds will be bad. Will I care? No way, Jose.