The Last Great Garden War

The last great garden war has begun.  The fragile detente that has existed between our realm and The Ivy since the First Great Garden war of 1995 has shattered.  And the world is a better place for it.

Like most great wars, this one was begun by a beautiful woman.  My wife, the Queen, has obtained a new nativist religion, one that decrees that only those things that spring from the local soil are worthy. She peers across our realm and sees the ivy that has not only crept far beyond the borders established in our 1995 conflict, but even beyond those more liberal lines set after smaller skirmishes.

She points one finger and with hoary, doom crow’s voice declares “invasive!”  And I march forward with the tools of war.  Her’s is the face that launched 1000 rakes; but no Helen is she, standing demurely behind the walls letting heroes fight her battles.  Nay, more Artemis than Aphrodite, this warrior woman, war bound and sap-thirsty, wields her pruners like a scythe. And if I falter, if my back cries for relief or my knees for surrender, I only have to look to her, forging far-afield, and giving no quarter to the enemy.

And no quarter can be given, for this battle does not stop at prior borders.  No it continues deep into the enemy’s ancestral home, where the Ivy has lived since even before my grandfather, The Old King, ruled these lands; and where the roots grow thick as my wrist and plumb deep into the earth.  And not only ivy falls to our assault.  Those that sought sanctuary there, the hated sumac, the decorative grasses, the carpet rose we had long tolerated because of it’s beauty.  “Invasive!” she calls and they feel the wrath of a Queen.

The battles seemed never-ending. Tendrils sought eyes, roots tripped boot, and thorn pierced through glove.  But my lady says we must succeed, so succeed we did, driving a stake through the taproot of the enemy.  Some outposts remained, but cutoff from their homeland they will whither and die.  The war is done.

Still, last night I dreamed that the enemy had planted seeds in my head, and stem and leave sprouted from my eyes and ears.  And the queen did shout ‘Invasive” before swinging rake and exposing the pulp of my brain.  And when I awoke I found a leaf upon my chest.  I crushed it within my clenched fest, just a small, fragile thing, but still a reminder, that some battles can never truly end.  I will remain ever vigilant for my Queen.