those damn vines....

 I'm not a fan of the summer heat, never have been. However, I love flowers, and they make my summer months happier as I watch them cycle through their lives. I've spent a lot of money at the garden shop for all manner of shrubs, seeds, perennials, and the occasional tomato plant. As I age, I have become more aware of my physical limitations puttering around the garden, trying to control the chaos presented by the many things that continue to thrive no matter how many times I pull, cut, curse, and stomp them. These unwanted vines are seemingly everywhere. I've seen that even the smallest snip of a length of the vine will sprout anew. Everywhere I look there are fresh new vines. I will not use weed killer, so don't even bother to suggest it. Think about it though, what is a weed to you might be on display in some garden shop elsewhere for sale as an exotic plant. I've seen such wonders and that makes your weed killer simply a plant killer. The same goes for bug killers and rodent killers. The bug killers kill bugs that are essential to our ecosystem in some way and the rodents feed some pretty fantastic birds, or your kitty and maybe even your dog and then they become poisoned by the mouse they ate.

We all are trying to control the world we live in. Fertilizers to weed killers, saving the bees to killing the mosquitoes and we're right back out there trying to do it again the next day. Even the weather report can't save us from the tornado or the effects of climate change. Forewarned is forearmed they have said and that's, pretty much, the extent of our ability to cope.

I watched this week, along with the rest of us, as the media droned on about the school shooting in Texas. There were endless calls for reform all with the NRA celebrating their cause in the background clothing themselves in the banner of the second amendment and drowning in self-righteousness. These proponents call out, 'how dare they?!?'. It doesn't take a Rhodes Scholar to know that the issue is as out of control as the vines around my garden.

While we watched in horror at the events in Uvalde the battle in Ukraine seemed to go south for our intrepid warriors and I was disheartened. We seemed to have lost our focus there and we really can't. We can't let Ukraine fall. To me, Putin is no better than the killer in Buffalo, NY, or Uvalde, TX. He's just a mentally ill little boy with too many weapons on his hands than he shouldn't ever be allowed to handle. 

I heard on the news that Americans have grown weary of the negative effects the war has placed on our economy and blame our president for our high prices. Americans' support for the Ukrainian cause has wavered and I have even seen a sign on a lawn in my neighborhood to Impeach Biden. Without getting too political here, how do people blame our current president for events initiated by Putin? He doesn't set gas prices. He can only affect our country's response to them and if I might be a little political, I would suggest that Putin might have become emboldened by our previous administration and by a world that was leaning towards extremism on several fronts. 

Vines, they seem to grow where ever the tiniest stem has fallen on fertile ground. 

On the morning shows, there was a psychologist speaking about Mental Health and told the audience to, 'check-in with yourself' and offered a checklist of things to do to help cope in these stressful times of what seems to be an endless stream of existential events. She told the audience to only worry about that which can be controlled and let the rest fall away. I paraphrased that somewhat. I laughed. 

It's a nice thought to just control what seems manageable and leave the rest to fate. That won't stop the tornadoes, fix climate change, heal the earth, save the bees, fix the economy, expand rights for women, the LGBTQ community, or the vines that threaten to take over our gardens. It sounds nice and manageable but I see it as another attempt at telling the masses to keep your collective heads down and stay in your respective lanes in a very nice and comforting way. What might happen if we all decided to act? What does it tell you when a majority of the populace wants something to go a certain way (Roe v Wade & Gun Control) and our elected officials can't seem to act accordingly? 

Control is an illusion anyway. It's all chaos and all we can control is our response to it. For some it's thoughts and prayers for others it's weed killer. In the meantime, I'm going to continue to pull the vines out wherever I see them while I am still able. I've just got to keep at it.