If you are a gardener you are probably familiar with bindweed, or Convolvulus arvensis, a member of the morning glory family. It is highly invasive, growing easily on disturbed land. The seeds from the fruits of its small white or pinkish flowers are dispersed by birds; but the seeds can also remain viable in the soil for up to two years. Even when it is pulled from above ground, its massive root system can re-sprout from root segments and rhizomes. While the bulk of the roots grow horizontally, its vertical roots can extend as far as twenty feet underground. This makes it nearly impossible to eradicate completely. Those people who ignorantly use Roundup® in the false belief that they are killing it, are only harming the rest of the environment and posing harm to their children and grandchildren.
I have tried to stay ahead of the bindweed coming up in my raised bed. Although I had placed thick layers of cardboard beneath the soil, the bindweed has managed to wind its way through it, where in some places there is a nearly solid mass of roots underneath the cardboard. I pull these roots out in large handfuls, but by the following morning, new ones have sprouted above ground. I have spent countless hours pulling it, not only out of my own garden, but also in the gardens of people that I worked for in the past. The bindweed is relentless and it is a battle of wills between this greedy plant and me.
I realized a couple of days ago how humans are very much like bindweed. It attempts to annihilate all other plants in its path by strangling them to death. Not only does it use other plants as a support to climb on; the vines use each other. They spiral around one another as though they are in a race to reach the sun. We humans have strangled much of the life that we share this planet with, to make more room for ourselves. We step on whatever and whoever is in our path to reach imagined happiness. We do this without consideration for anyone or anything but ourselves. I will save the plants in my garden, one at a time, from impending death by bindweed. I will nurture all of the flora and fauna that I can, in spite of assaults by my fellow humans.
