Joy to the World, the Solstice Comes

So worn out, with no energy. All I cooked was a bowl of cherry Jell-O, an impulse I could not explain because I never eat it. I dragged myself outdoors and in the woods hacked invasive Japanese honeysuckle away from oaks and felt a bit better; it saves their lives. At 4:45 the sun set. I remembered the winter solstice was coming at 5:03 p.m. and wanted to be doing something special at that moment, like setting off bottle rockets. Or should I whip some cream for the Jell-O? Then, at 5:03 I hear what I've never heard before: singing. Caroling. "Joy to the World." Coming closer until it's right outside my door. I open the door and get the surprise of my life:

My neighbor Terri (top left), who is musical, had organized her children and grandchildren to come down the road and carol for me! I've never seen and heard anything so sweet!

Not only that, but they brought me a present and a bowl of grape/apple/nut/marshmallow salad--perfect with the Jell-O!

Ripping Out Honeysuckles

There are three or four different kinds of invasive honeysuckles: Japanese, Amur, and others, and while not all honeysuckles are invasive tree killers, the tangled shrubbery you see along Missouri roadways and trainways, so thickly overgrown it can look almost like mist, about half the heights of the trees and and twining its way up, is the thing to root out. Yesterday I volunteered for Honeysuckle Removal Day at Bluebird Park. I'd never been there, but its name drew me, and I hate invasive honeysuckles too. Young people from colleges and prep schools were there en masse, and I worked with three young men who chopped, yanked and uprooted, while I pulled yards and yards of honeysuckle out of the grove of persimmon trees and put it at the curb for pickup. I honestly felt the trees thanking us. We cleared an area about the size of a living room, and after three hours we hadn't removed it all and there were some stalks (like the curved one on the left of the photo) too thick for anything but a chainsaw, but we had made a good start. Bluebird Park is a suburban park and I saw no bluebirds there, but I saw robins.

Tips from our leader: Remove honeysuckle shrubs by the roots if possible. When pulling their vines from the earth, pull out, not up. Cut the stalks as low on the trunks as you can, and the leader will come by and paint the stumps with Monsanto's Roundup, the only thing that kills 'em besides fire.

Underground Cable

This week's work, hating and subverting Japanese-honeysuckle vines, invasives with woody runners as thick as your wrist, that snake out of the earth and twine their way up trees, strangling them. To complete the kill, they load the treetop with so much vine that the trees topple. This vine is dead, but it only shows you how the thing wants to squeeze the jesus out of everything in its path.

Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) is most evident in winter, and I sever as many "cables" as I can, finding them so grossly offensive I feel driven to cut them even knowing the cut end will sprout five more tentacles. Easy to I.D. the living vines because their leaves, dammit, are evergreen. In some areas the vines droop from branches practically forming curtains. There are only two ways to kill it dead: a springtime controlled burn, or cutting and painting the root end with Roundup herbicide. Obviously those are jobs for pros and I can't do it throughout my hundred Divine acres. If I had a magic lamp one of my three wishes would be: No invasive species!! This plant is of the Devil.

Alas, it is said that the entity that introduced it to the state was the MDC as ground cover for home gardens. It escaped and is ripping down rows of trees everywhere I look. Positively grievous. Picture taken on the Timberstone trail.