Exactly right.
When I moved into my former house I had BITTERSWEET vines growing all over the place. Some of the vines were 2 1/2” in diameter where they grew out of the ground. I cut and sprayed with ORTHO Ground Clear for several years to bring it under control.
My 80 year old neighbor said that it had all come from a 5’ diameter Christmas Wreath that the people across the road had hung on their barn one year. Bittersweet gets these pretty red berries on it in the fall. So, people will cut the vine and form it into round wreaths and sell it at nurseries.
He said they left this wreath up for six months. The birds then ate all the berries and spread the seeds all over the neighbor hood. This had apparently happened twenty years before I ever bought this house. All the vines had grown up from that wreath.
The problem with Bittersweet is that it grows up into the canopy of trees. Eventually overwhelming the trees capacity to hold the weight. Then the tree eventually breaks.
I invested in a Stihl Straight shaft bicycle grip brush cutter. The kind with the circular saw blade on it. I cut and sprayed for a couple years. That property was also full of dead Mountain Laurel. So much so that you could not walk around the woods on the property. I cut that down piled it up and burned it.
My ancestors came to this county in 1889. I was the first of my immediate family to move away, moved back in 1995. Gone 25 years. We own quite a bit of farmland, while dad was sick we took care of him, but a lot of thing around the farms fell in disrepair. He died at 94, 2-1/2 years ago. We have our hands full trying to begin to focus on the farm. The land is all rented right now, but I'm on my 3rd try to finish restoring the house at the farm and move there. It is close, but have a couple of issues that I cannot do for myself.
Nature recovers what man does not occupy. When my family moved to this county from Coryell County, it was a blank slate. The prairie sod had not been turned. The county was cut up and established in 1885. There were no trees, tons of prairie dogs and wild animals, few stores water was scarce. After the railroads came in, around 1907, it blossomed. New productive soil, and a way to market the production.
We've lived through many more stages, each with ups and downs. Like most of rural Texas; farms, ranches and oil have blessed the state.
Makes me very angry when the freaks like John F(n) Kerry say they need to confiscate farm land and the Globalist talk about making us eating bugs. And the big corporations and big government both want to destroy the sane people that are still alive.
About a mile from where the house at our farm is a cemetery that was donated by my dad's grandfather, along with land for a church and a school. He was put to rest in that cemetery, and this is on his grave marker.
The Globalist plotters have totally exposed themselves. Texas is not going to starve, we are not going to bow to them, they can “come and take it”. And I don't think they will succeed.This is on the grave marker for my great grandfather pic.twitter.com/D2D3F2GpL6— Dave K. (@TX_1) December 26, 2016