Oh remember my dreamy post just last week about the promising sprouts and budding shrubbery everywhere I turned at our new abode?  Well, very quickly, just as I suspected, the garden bed I saved for last changed my opinions on this whole mess.  A realization came to me upon unearthing dozens of tree sized logs laid across the bed, some actual rugs, a layer of black plastic, a layer of ashy dust and much to my dismay the reason the previous owners moved out.

It was the weed.  The knotweed.

Oh Japanese knotweed with your orange roots so fragile and always breaking, with your pink sweet potato tubers plumping themselves several feet under the earth, your stalky bamboo stalks taking up the majority of our burn pile, how I loathe you.  At points I was thigh deep in the soil standing beside massive clumps of the stuff, scraping away carefully, feeling like an archeologist trying to sweep the soil off of every single root and bulb.  The boys joined in pointing out the familiar and undeniable tiny pink buds in every corner of the bed, plunging their little spades into the ground in efforts to rid our garden of such a nuisance.  While surely Round-up would be an easy solution, I can assure you I will not go there.  I will battle-fight (In the words of Miles and Rowan) this pest until its gone.  I am honest to goodness going to ask my neighbor, whom has an excavator, what he charges.  When the job it complete I will watch the whole thing go up in a funeral pyre.  It seems it’s the only way.

There were brighter points in the garden yesterday, I promise.  We frolicked with a friend, bird watched, took a walk to the stream, and left out a few colorful strands of yarn for the birds to build their nests.  Of course, this tree we dangled those fibers from was in the calm of the front yard, where we could try to forget the disaster occurring just around the corner.

And today I will dig.