Wishing for Photographic Evidence

In my ongoing battle against the trumpet vine suckers that keep popping up into my vegetable garden I hit a new high and a new low today. You see after going to the botanical gardens last week and seeing how perfectly their vegetable beds had been cleared and readied for winter I decided I had better take the opportunity this nice weather is giving me and do the same. The more I work now, the easier it will be in the spring right?

So I started digging up the overgrown weeds and ends of the vegetable plants last week. Turns out we had loads of carrots in there that I knew nothing about. That's what you get when you let a two year old plant the seeds for you.

It's been pretty slow going. Not because of the leaves that have fallen on top of everything or the grass that has encroached the withered pumpkin vine, but because of the evil trumpet vine. You heard me. EVIL. They must have powers from the devil since they seem impervious to roundup!

Anyway, today I went out thinking I'd at least get another one foot strip done in the thing. I came upon five trumpet vine shoots coming out of the ground together. It has been my experience if I just dig deep enough all those shoots will eventually converge onto one root stem that I can then pull out. So I dug and I dug and I dug (or is it digged?) until I hit what I thought was a huge rock. I showed it to Daniel as he was leaving for work (he's in family medicine right now) and he said that it wasn't a rock, but the root and I should just try to wedge the shovel under it. Well, it took me another 15 minutes to get the right leverage, but then the beauty came up!

Picture this if you will: two feet long, three inches in diameter, a foot and a half underground. I had dug up a LOG! Well, not really a log, it was indeed the root for the trumpet vine. In my heart I felt victory, and defeat. I had truly unearthed a huge part of the problem, but if that's how big the root for five tiny vines was I am in real trouble. I will never win to this plant. It will eventually overtake the lawn, and then start creeping up the walk to the deck. Finally it will engulf the entire house and we will never be able to step foot out the front door. Good news, we're moving before that could ever happen.

Oh and picture this as well: Charlotte was delighted when I finally got the log out of the ground because she could then fit herself into the hole in the ground. She called it her chair. She sat in her chair and found a worm coming out of one of the clumps of dirt she covered her skirt with. She uncharacteristically picked the worm up and called it her pet. Boy was she really miffed when I told her that she needed to get out of it so I could fill it in.