The Vine That Ate Butters

 

Our Kudzu Field - Two Months Ago

Or at least Butters’ neighbor.

Anyone who has ever spent time in the south or driven south, knows about kudzu (I refuse to capitalize it’s name – proper nouns be darned).

It’s icky.
It’s insidious.
Oh, heck, it’s downright evil.
And it’s in our backyard.

Thomas and I received a call from a (very friendly) city official giving us a warning about the removal of our kudzu. Basically, we needed to get rid of it or we’d be in trouble. ’nuff said.
Besides, I’ve had nightmares about the stuff, and I swear it was trying to eat Thomas’ ‘68 VW Bus, Melvin.
You scoff, but you didn’t see it. I was too horrified to take a picture, just started pulling the vines out from under the bus until I realized that some had grown up around the clutch cable! (yes, I know what a clutch cable is. I’ve even helped put a new one in :-p 

For those of you who are a little unclear on just what it is that I’m railing on about, kudzu is a vine. A very fast growing vine that was brought to the US from Japan by some well-meaning person, I’m sure.
It grows like a normal plant in Japan, but in the southern US, well gosh. It’s just so happy.
Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

Kudzu (クズ or 葛 Kuzu^?), Pueraria lobata (syn. P. montana, P. thunbergiana), (sometimes known as foot a night vine,mile a minute vine, Gat Gun, Ge Gan^[1] and The vine that ate the South) is one of about 20 species in the genusPueraria in the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. It is native to southern Japan and southeast China in eastern Asia. The name comes from the Japanese word for this plant, kuzu. The other species of Pueraria occur in southeast Asia, further south.

See the common names? I’m not the only one with a chip on her shoulder.
But there are some really good hearted people who try to look at the bright side of kudzu.
Check out this site about kudzu gazing – sorry, make that kudZOO.

But I digress. Thomas and I didn’t have the luxury to see the bright side. We needed to see the uprooted side, and soon.
Once again I was truly and deeply grateful, touched and humbled by the generosity of our friends.

Greg and Chris, two of Thomas’ long time roomates, came over and spent an entire Saturday helping us remove the kudzo from our property (and our neighbors – we’re betting on karma. Karma and common sense; it’ll come back quicker if we leave it just next door).
Anyway, they came over and worked their butts off – remember that it’s still summer here in Atlanta.
Greg brought his SUV with 4-wheel drive along with some heavy chains. We (mostly they) rolled a bunch of k into a bale, wrapped the chains around them, hooked them to the trailer hitch, and we (mostly me) drove the truck out, pulling the k up. It pulled the truck sideways on several occasions – that’s just freaky.
Freakier still was the fact that we found an old structure hidden in the kudzu!!!

There was a, a what? A house? Garage? Shed? Who knows – but it was about 14′x50′ and straddled the property lines of both of our properties. Cleaning up some of the trash the next day I got to pull on some of my archaeology days from college to work out a time frame.
There was a good bit of red “DO NOT ENTER” tape buried in there, so I’m assuming it was condemned, and around the mid-to-late1980s since there was a styrofoam Burger King container. I don’t remember seeing those since I was fairly young – anyone know when they quit using styrofoam boxes?

There were also toys, a christmas tree stand, broken chairs, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ball (still inflated – Chris had fun with that), an old tin double decker bus toy (I’m so keeping that), broken dishes, some old (but not old/cool, more like old/crappy) tools, a flat tire (with wheel) and way more soda bottles and cans than I like to think of (oh, and beer, malt beverages, that sort of thing)

Thomas has named the spot where the kudzu was the “Field of Despair”.

Really, it looks way worse than it did before!
But maybe I’ll have fewer nightmares – about that, at least. 

I meant to go to sleep a while ago, so I’m going to cut this short.

Hopefully I’ll have a cool panorama of before kudzu to post in here soon – our friend Jarrett’s on the case (he’s our climb happy friend who cleaned our gutters – another amazing friend)
Yeah, I need to pause before I get all teary about all the love. It’s really just wonderful.

Our Kudzu Field – Two Months Ago

Greg and His Rake

Some time in the middle of the day

Mandy Helping Greg

Random Weird Beetle

A Much Deserved Break

Chris and Chain

My Heroes

Mandy and Murry – Our Mascots for the Day

Our Good Luck Praying Mantis – it landed on Greg’s car and hung with us for a couple hours. Even while I was driving!

More of the Afters

Under the kudzu – the Mystery Building

goodnight!