Yours for Life

Here are three plants I would encourage people to NEVER plant. They are fast growing and invasive. Having said that, if you want to cover something, you have areas where you need ground-cover, or co-workers with whom you feel the need to get even, this is your stuff. But it will not stay where planted.

This is called Goat Grass by our neighbours, tho' I suspect it has other names, many of which would not be printed in this family-friendly blog. It grows anywhere and spreads rapidly. The neighbours on both sides have it so our yard is assaulted on two fronts. I have pulled out several pounds of it from the side of the house and from the back where I have planted my peas and clematis. And I think it is ugly to boot.
This is Virginia Creeper and it is harder to eliminate than bedbugs in a flophouse. Gram planted some around her house and it still lives on even tho' that house is gone. Mom tried to kill it by injecting pure 'farmer-version' Round-up into its stem, but that didn't even phase it. This particular plant was growing on The Geek's house when she moved in and we pulled it off in 2006. as it was wrecking the brick and mortar. And have been pulling it up ever since. Today I filled a 80 litre garbage can with stuff that had grown in the month or so since we last filled up the garbage can.

And this little beauty is a Hops Vine. If it yielded anything other than leaves, I would tend it lovingly and encourage it to grow on both sides of the back fence. Apparently the price of beer is going up because of the shortage of hops. If this was a useful plant, we could have a nice little cash crop in our back yard instead of the pesky vine that it is. This one came over from our neighbour on the east side, where it grows around her garbage can area, tho' she didn't admit to planting it.