Those Uncontrollable Vines!

If gardening teaches me anything, it teaches me how little control I have! Especially in my garden...

I plant things - and they grow... or don't! (Like rhubarb, which doesn't do well in my yard these days!)

Other things that I haven't planted just grow... and grow... until they become a real problem.... (Like the wild grape and Virginia creeper, which have been growing out of control... onto trees and the cedar hedge... until it is climbing over telephone lines...)

They are lovely when they turn red in the fall... but they are really a nuisance, creeping out of the soil onto some new plant, and suddenly they overwhelm it.

The plants they have climbed onto (from the wire fence) in this photo are two small trees on the other side of the fence, also my lilac bush... and then up onto limbs of a pine tree, where they are impossible for me to reach.

Every autumn, when they change color - I have a chance to tear away at them...

I may thin them out - but I don't think I'll ever eliminate them.

Nature is definitely stronger than me!