Big things have small beginnings
Last year I constructed a pair of trellises, strategically placed to prevent my roommate from making eye contact with the Filipino neighbor when she goes outside to consume whiskey and cigarettes - thereby preventing them both from having psychotic screaming episodes which degenerate into a racist tirade about being an immigrant "slant-eyes" who doesn't belong in her country. I'm not super into those, so I've been trying to plant some fast-growing vine to take over the view. However, the strategy hasn't been working. Months of psychotic freeze-scorching flood-drought weather have thoroughly murdered the Christ out of the solanum, clematis, morning glory, and passion flower that I've tried planting there, and I just don't have the budget for this.
It's time for the nuclear option.
Polygonum aubertii, aka fallopia aubertii, is a cousin of the infamous (and delicious?) Japanese knotweed - better known as Russian Vine, deceitfully distributed under the name "silver lace vine" like it is this delicate, elegant thing. In the UK, you cannot legally sell your house if this stuff is anywhere on your property. It grows nearly 2 feet per month, can tear the roofs off of buildings and sprout through the walls, shatters concrete pots, drills roots 6 feet into the earth, and regenerates whole new plants from the tiniest root and stem fragments and gives no fucks about what it's growing in, rendering it virtually unkillable. And as you can see, the seeds are also incredibly small and probably very difficult to intercept once formed. Most gardening sites tell you STOP and never to plant it, you moron.
So I'm gonna!
If I can't even grow this, I will know the land is simply a blighted deathscape under some necromantic curse and maybe I should just string a tarp between our apartments and paint a background on it a la Wile E. Coyote. I'll have to cut it every month, burn the cuttings, and trap it in a metal pot - possibly repotting it if it somehow breaks through, or just dust off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
It's time for the nuclear option.
Polygonum aubertii, aka fallopia aubertii, is a cousin of the infamous (and delicious?) Japanese knotweed - better known as Russian Vine, deceitfully distributed under the name "silver lace vine" like it is this delicate, elegant thing. In the UK, you cannot legally sell your house if this stuff is anywhere on your property. It grows nearly 2 feet per month, can tear the roofs off of buildings and sprout through the walls, shatters concrete pots, drills roots 6 feet into the earth, and regenerates whole new plants from the tiniest root and stem fragments and gives no fucks about what it's growing in, rendering it virtually unkillable. And as you can see, the seeds are also incredibly small and probably very difficult to intercept once formed. Most gardening sites tell you STOP and never to plant it, you moron.
So I'm gonna!
If I can't even grow this, I will know the land is simply a blighted deathscape under some necromantic curse and maybe I should just string a tarp between our apartments and paint a background on it a la Wile E. Coyote. I'll have to cut it every month, burn the cuttings, and trap it in a metal pot - possibly repotting it if it somehow breaks through, or just dust off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.