Gardening in Hell

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. There are tons of lush, green gardens in Hell. What they don't tell you is that they are full of ivy. Nothing but ivy. If any other plant tries to get a foothold in the Hell Regional Botanical Garden, it is immediately strangled by ivy.

Come to think of it, ivy is a perfect symbol for evil. At first it looks friendly, with big, lush, shiny leaves, almost the perfect picture of sensuality and even fecundity. It can even look respectable, climbing up the brick walls of some venerable institution, breaking the monotony of red brick and grey mortar. It is, of course, easy to grow, the wide and narrow path that even a person on his fifth marriage and fourth sect can manage to get to thrive. It is the promise of a garden utopia. No work and lush greenery year round. You can almost picture Harvard experts telling farmers in Africa to plant nothing but ivy for unlimited rewards at minimal expense. When the famine hits, they will look shocked and offended, "but look at those parts that did plant nothing but ivy: look how green they are."

Then the most perceptive see the deception. They find an ivy tendril 100 feet from the planting site. They find a little volunteer among the roses. Next are the folks who notice that it has clearly crossed the designated ivy planting area. Then come the unwashed, the lukewarm, the blind, who finally see it when it has taken over everything, when it has climbed every tree, every wall, threatening the foundations of buildings, menacing every other bit of flora in the garden.

Furthermore, since sins beget sins, the ivy provides a cover for blackberries to spread. Now, I love blackberries, but in the wrong place, they are as evil a weed as ivy, and they make the ivy harder to extract, because one can no longer just grab the ivy and pull - one risks serious hand injury that way (and on top of healing burns, that just hurts).

Ivy is the devil's plant (OK, all you Southerners can start ranting about Kudzu, but I don't have kudzu, so I will gripe about ivy).

It all started with a need to find a place to take pictures of some sculptures. My yard is dominated by a redwood, so it has a certain look to it, which is great for photographs, but I needed a more classical yard, with a variety of flowers, and the like. So I figured that I could use my parents' yard, which is large and has several areas, for different types of settings. The problem is that my favorite part of the yard has been neglected for awhile, which is normally not a problem, since it is hidden from the main part of the yard. My mother has given thought to reclaiming it, but the ivy is just too daunting, so it sits, the Keilholtz Jungle (not to be confused with Amalia's Jungle, which is actually quite well groomed, allowing her ample space to romp and look for bears and tigers and whatnot).

So half out of selfish desire (I want to take some pictures there), part from filial piety (my parents really would like to reclaim this part of the yard), and part from just liking to relandscape, oh, and part guilt, since the remnants of a Junior High experiment with mint cultivation still plague my mother's vegetable patch (mint might be ivy's other companion in the gardens of Hell), I started yesterday with attacking the ivy. It is amazing how time flies and the ivy still stands. Additionally, I have found that it has invaded another part of the yard that I did not realize it was in. Since I am in Sacramento only once a week, I am going to be facing ivy for a month (to keep me in practice my neighbors' ivy constantly menaces our own yard, so I am always ready with my ivy defense force).

So, if you see a lot of ivy as the floral incarnation of Satan images here, you will understand.