Horseweed Lament

For humanity, the wages of sin is death, or so saith holy writ. But it sure warn't that way all over the garden. For weeds, the wages of sin was life, something painfully close to everlasting life too in some cases, or so it seems when I work out back. 

It's mare's tail time right now, mare's tail here, there, and all over. I could, I think, have nothing but mare's tail out back--that's how husky the stuff is. In no time, it'll be up to my shoulders. Mare's tail is an annual, so the roots aren't deep. I can pull it out by hand without much trouble, but I swear I will never get it all.

There's some spider wort to the right in this picture, but in no time at all, that sweetheart would be swamped by an obnoxious crowd who thinks nothing of taking over the entire neighborhood. 

Fecundity? These guys make rabbits look like Shakers. They just won't quit. In early spring, I cut back an indoor ivy plant that was looking spindly, cut it back to nothing and stuck it outside, hoping it would come back. It's still not doing well, but look at the mare's tail go to town.

How on earth did it get there? The wages of sin. . .

Here's another, this one butting up against a screen, still showing its fists, tough as nails, growing out of nothing more nourishing than sand and ash.

I call it "mare's tail," which it is, but it also goes by "horse weed," which is a shade less romantic--"mare's tail," after all, a phrase often used for delightful clouds on a sweet summer's day. 

You'll find it spelled this way too: "marestail," all one word, no apostrophe, as if to say that this headache shouldn't be confused with sweet summer days. No relation. You can also call it "horseweed," too, which is what I'll call it after pulling it for the last few days.

When horseweed's flowers go to seed, they get windblown--and the seeds are legion, fifty thousand from a single plant, so many they get in grills, for pete's sake.

Experts say once upon a time they weren't a headache, but--listen to this!--once farmers started adopting minimum tillage, a truly righteous practice that conserves precious topsoil, a plague got itself begat. Today, horseweed never had it so good. Ain't it true?--you try to do the right thing, and you get horse-whipped by marestail. Even your best deeds are filthy rags.

What's more, hither and yon, horseweed laughs off herbicides with a native-born immunity that makes the stuff even more obnoxious. As we speak, thousands are right now laughing and singing and growing in our backyard acre, thousands. I hear 'em.

It's horseweed, a royal pain in the keester. I can pull the stuff all day long and come back tomorrow and have at it again.

All for an apple, too, a lousy apple from a tree about which the two of them, royally naked, were expressly warned. 

Woe and woe and woe.