There are more invasive species than I originally thought.
Garlic mustard I learned about in elementary school, when we spent field days uprooting the weed along the paths through the forest that stood between my elementary and middle school buildings. Mint, I have recently learned, has invasive properties where I live, and should be contained to pots rather than grown directly in the ground. As it turns out, the purple bellflower that I always assumed someone planted intentionally in my back flowerbed has a way of spreading through rhizomes, or horizontal roots under the surface of the soil, and their incredibly deep taproots make removal nearly impossible. Their resilience means that even after removal, any root fragments left behind can and most likely will sprout a new plant in a matter of days. I have been making it my mission while the weather has been warm but not too hot to eliminate the invasive plants in my yard to make room for native, pollinator-friendly flora.
The thing that all invasives have in common is that they grow readily — so readily that they make it difficult for native species to survive in the same area. Earlier this week, I read this newsletter comparing anxiety to an invasive weed. The two things I have been battling all month long might be more related than I initially thought.
There is an ivy growing in the front yard that I left mostly unattended last year, whose removal is proving very stubborn. This ivy is one of the invasives with deep taproots that are nearly impossible to remove completely. Even in the unlikely event that one is able to remove the taproots completely, any seeds that may have fallen from the plant at one point in time can remain viable in the soil for decades, reproducing long after the parent plant has been eradicated. Its stubbornness, although frustrating, is not what makes this ivy invasive. From my cursory internet searches — and I’ll be the first to admit I’m no expert — this ivy’s invasive property seems to be how it spreads: by latching onto the stems of other, often native plants, winding around them, and slowly stealing the nutrients from them. Anxiety feels to me a lot like this ivy: deeply rooted, wrapping its tendrils around healthy thoughts, slowly choking them out until they can no longer grow.
“… anxiety will take all the light, the water, the oxygen, and when you have given it everything it will turn around and ask for more.” — Ella Frances Sanders
When I saw the ivy creeping across my front flower bed last year, I left it unattended because I didn’t know what it was and liked the flowers it produced. I was sure it was a weed but didn’t think to determine its invasiveness until this year when it started growing back in the spring. Anxiety has a way of covering itself in pretty flowers to mask its invasive and suffocating nature. It seems almost useful at first, offering hesitation and fear as safeguards, working to protect us, it says. Only when it reappears year after year do we start to question its motives.
For the last couple of years, things in my life have felt increasingly less sure. The future has seemed more and more uncertain as I continuously hurdle into it. The uncertainty of it all provides the perfect soil for anxiety to grow, and it’s not that the soil is particularly untenable for other, more welcome species of thoughts, only that the invasives are going to to what they do best: take over.
For the last couple of years, I have been saying “the last couple of years” when referring to my period of self-doubt. Thinking back, searching for the exact time when certainty was replaced with uncertainty, I do not know that I can pinpoint it. I think I have always been hesitant. A little unsure. Afraid to make the wrong choice, to plant a perennial I will no longer like by the next growing season. And so I leave the soil untended, unwittingly creating the perfect environment for invasive plants, invasive thought patterns. This year, with a newfound interest in gardening, I am left to pull the weeds I have left for so long that the landscape looks almost unrecognizable without them. The roots break when I pull them from the ground, and I know seeds have already spread that I cannot see, waiting for another year to bloom. The weed removal process will not be a swift one, I realize now. I will likely be pulling at the same unwelcome plant life for as long as I live in this home.
The anxiety that has taken root in my brain wraps its tendrils around my good thoughts, so that I cannot look forward to one thing without worrying about a thousand things that will not go wrong, but could, in theory. It becomes hard to separate the thoughts and plants I want from the grasp of the invasive ones I do not. Anxiety, like the ivy I am dismally trying to remove, has deep taproots and winding tendrils. Its seeds can lay dormant for years before the right circumstances for growth make themselves apparent. The removal of such thoughts will not happen in a day, a week, or a month, but rather, must be the result of ongoing work.
Eventually, once the invasives are removed enough, there will be room for native plants once more. Slowly, they’ll fill in the space where the ivy once lived.
there are too many apps
the internet is too much to manage lately
I need someone else to do the things
I don’t want to do
the list of which is mounting
can I hire a taskrabbit
to give me a lobotomy?
fruity tooty
I know it is summer because
I’m drinking coconut water through a straw
and sleeping more than the sun
the combination of which
which has solved most of my problems
except for the ones I created in my head
the country is in more debt than I can count and they’re more worried about mine
I ordered a new water bottle
64 oz, I’m afraid of running out
of time, energy, money
all the things that can’t be bought
but I keep paying for them anyways
Well, I have some gardening to do. I hope that this weekend you get time to tend to your own garden, whether physical or mental.
Live, laugh, love ya.