Monday, September 22, 2008

Bermuda


I hate Bermuda. 

Allow me to explain that statement so I don’t start a war with a British territory. 

I hate things that bear the name “Bermuda” with the lone exception of Bermuda shorts.  Those, I’m thankful for.  The 1970’s style short-shorts look terrible on me. 

OK…maybe I should clarify further. 

I hate two things that bear the name “Bermuda”. 

First is the Bermuda triangle a.k.a. the bane of sailors near and far. 

The second is Bermuda grass a.k.a. the bane of my yard care existence.

Those of you living north of the Mason-Dixon line are fortunate to avoid this demonic ground cover due to the fact that it thrives in hot climates.  In The South though, when a contractor wants to seed your yard on the cheap, he’ll lay down a combination of fescue, rye, and, you guessed it, Bermuda grass.  He’s banking on the fact that one of the three will germinate and give his client something green in the front yard. 

He’s also banking on the fact that you won’t ever want to have flower beds or a garden.  

If you go to Bermudagrass.com, you will find several pages explaining all the wonderful things about this kind of grass.  Then you get to the bottom of the page and there is a section entitled, “The Down Side”.  There it uses the word, “aggressive” to describe how it spreads across your lawn.  That is, in my opinion, an egregious understatement unless, by the term “aggressive” they mean “Attila The Hun” and by “lawn” they mean “Central Asia and Eastern Europe”. 

Let me explain what I mean. 

It can spread by seed, by above ground runners, as well as by vast networks of root runners.  When you try to dig it out, it will break off at weaker “nodes” leaving the majority of the root behind.  If there is even a millimeter of root in the ground, it will grow a new plant.  Basically…if you ignore it, it will eventually grow over your house and pull it into the ground. 

Also, if this grass were personified, it would be George Patton or maybe Bruce Willis in the movie “Die Hard”.  Anyway, it acts like it has a strategy and it takes no prisoners.  It will wrap itself around the roots of other plants so that the only way to dig it up is to damage or destroy the plants you want. 

It’s also a liar.  It doesn’t even come from Bermuda.

I used to think that gardening was a slightly less than masculine hobby.  Now I’m convinced of this truth:  Gardening = War. 

Every time I go out to tend my landscaping, I’m walking onto the battlefield.

For the plants it’s a life or death struggle and they fight as if they know it.  I just came inside from pulling ten miles of Bermuda from my raspberry patch and my arms bear the scars of that skirmish.  

Now it’s personal.  

I’m contemplating adding the phrase, “with a vengeance” to all my gardening activities.  For example,

“Honey, I’m going to mow the lawn….with a vengeance.”  Or, “I have my garden fork and I’m going weeding…..with a vengeance.”. 

If this rant sounds angry, it’s because it is.  I’ve been battling this noxious plant since we moved in and I know that the only way to win is to apply a scorched Earth policy.  

Total botanical annihilation…

with a vengeance.  

Every time I’m fighting this stuff I think of sin.

I think about how the sins in my life are just like that Bermuda trying to aggressively spread in my soul.  

I think about how this is a life or death struggle I’m in and how, in the same way that plant lies about where it comes from, my sin is never forthright about its origin.  It will try to hide its roots by mingling them with the roots of good and virtuous “growth”.  And the only way to deal with it is to let Jesus take his trowel, dig down, and pull out the roots.  

This is not a passive thing on our end.  

It will take time and it will hurt.  

But, just like the garden, this is war and I, for one, do not want that Bermuda sin to win.  And so I’ll let Jesus dig, and I’ll keep weeding…

with a vengeance.  

1 comment:

Tyler Childs said...

Hey Adam. I was just messing around with my blog, because I'm in class.

Anyways, I ran into www.dot.tk a few months back, and you can get a free domain name.

I have mine www.tylerchilds.tk which directs to tylerchilds.blogspot.com

Just letting you know about that site. It's really easy to link a .blogspot.com blog to a .tk domain.