The Bell Tolls for Thee

I never planted the purple flowers in my yard; they infiltrated the flower beds on the west side of my yard by crawling stealthily under the fence and its concrete footer and growing in the horrid red rock that made up most of that side of the yard when we moved into our house. I noticed that they didn’t seem to care that they had to grow on top of heavy black plastic in the tiniest bits of soil that had blown into the rock. They spread happily through the rock with their hanging purple bell-shaped flowers.  “Those are kind of pretty,” I thought. Love leads so often to weakness and letting down our guard, and that is exactly what happened in this case. I was Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction, and the bellflower was Glenn Close.  It wasn’t long before its green spikes spread. They infiltrated from the red rock area, across a garden path and into one of my larger perennial beds. Soon, I noticed that once the flowers quit blooming, the remaining foliage tended to turn yellow then develop white powdered mildew. Unacceptable behavior. The bellflower was no longer a flower; it was a weed.  The battle was on. I couldn’t allow these invaders to conduct their own version of biological warfare in that bed.

the enemy returns

My first plan of attack was to pull them. I spent hours yanking them out - very satisfying because they seemed easy to pull. I filled at least one wheelbarrow with their limp green carcasses before standing back to admire my work. My satisfaction was short-lived because unfortunately the little heart-shaped leaves emerged again.

Fine, I thought, I’ll just go deeper. I had to get the roots. That’s when I fell victim to a classic blunder. No, I didn’t get involved in a land war in Asia nor did I go in against a Sicilian when death was on the line. Worse. I broke out my little garden tiller and attempted to chop them into bits. “Mwahahahaha! Die! Die! Die!” I muttered under the roar of the tiller. I had underestimated the power of my enemy. The next summer they were back...in greater force. I clearly needed to arm myself with more information. (I know; that probably should have been my first step, but alas...) I learned that my enemies were called "creeping bellflowers" and had a huge taproot with side-shooting rhizomes. My classic blunder was that I had unknowingly used my tiller to help the enemy multiply. Each root was like the Hydra of Greek mythology: cut off one head and two spring up in its place. It was time for hand to hand combat.

the alien life form breaking through plastic

I broke out my digging fork and turned the soil one chunk at a time. I pulled apart each clod by hand, peeling out the root. If necessary, I’d take another stab to go even deeper. Usually, the deeper dig yielded still more roots. Some of them were huge. This one was a mutant albino carrot powerful enough to break through thick landscaping plastic like the creature tearing out of John Hurt's chest in Alien. Was it tedious? Yes. Was it satisfying? YES. I added more and more to the mass grave of roots that I placed on black plastic. The plastic hadn’t been effective as a mulch, but, I reasoned with glee, its heat-absorbing capabilities would help it bake the roots to a faster death. 

I'm not a cold-blooded plant killer; I'm just hell-bent on protecting my more well-behaved flowers like the Johnson's Blue geranium behind the mass grave. I'm sure I'll be forced to continue preventative strikes so that they don't return. The area I cleaned out before still has baby leaves popping up here and there, but I'm controlling them with pulling and chemical warfare (using a sponge brush to paint on a toxic cocktail of castile soap and Roundup...more on that later in a post the battle of the bindweed...)

the killing fields