The Bamboo

Right now, as I’m writing this, my husband is at the front of our property with a sprayer full of concentrated brush killer, spraying bamboo shoots like they’re enemy soldiers sneaking onto our property to wreak havoc. And in a way, they are.

Sadly, like property owners all over America, we’ve been forced to declare war on our neighbor’s bamboo, and as a result, we’ve had to take aggressive actions to preserve our way of life.

Our recent bamboo woes take me back to the late 1990s, when we’d visit my husband’s parents in Chattanooga. One Thanksgiving, we noticed that my father-in-law had planted a few innocent-looking bamboo sprouts near their back door. They were quite pretty, actually— tall and graceful, swaying in the breeze like something you’d see in a magazine. A few months later, their beloved Cairn terrier, Killer, passed away, and my father-in-law buried him near that bamboo with a small marker. It seemed fitting at the time, this peaceful spot where their little dog could rest.

But bamboo is anything but peaceful.

Every time we visited their Tudor-style home over the next decade, that bamboo had gotten bigger and bigger and claimed a little more territory in the back. My mother-inlaw was battling dementia and other physical health problems, and my father- in-law was working full-time at the Veterans Administration while caring for her around the clock. The yard became a very low priority— perhaps the lowest of priorities— and it showed. The bamboo spread like wildfire, turning their backyard into a jungle.

We offered to help whenever we visited, but my father-in-law was proud and stubborn in that way good men often are. He didn’t want anyone thinking he couldn’t take care of his own yard. So we watched, helpless, as the backyard got away from him.

Then in 2009, my father-inlaw died suddenly. Overnight, we found ourselves responsible for my mother-in-law, who needed specialized care, and their home, which needed, well, everything. We had to sort through decades of belongings, make repairs, tackle the yard, and prepare the house for sale—all while living an hour away and working full-time jobs. It was overwhelming for us.

Standing at their back door one day, we stared at a backyard completely shaded out by towering bamboo stalks. “Where do we even start back here?” my husband asked, and continued from page

I heard defeat in his voice.

The next day, we called a guy with a small backhoe and paid him hundreds of dollars to dig out the worst of the bamboo. For the next three months, we patrolled that yard like security guards, hunting down every new shoot and killing it with a sprayer filled with highpotency brush killer. It was exhausting work, and we had to stay on top of it, but we finally won, and sunlight poured through the back windows. The whole house felt bright and hopeful again.

So you can imagine our horror a few years ago when we spotted bamboo taking root on our neighbor’s property, just ten feet from our property line. Both my husband and I developed instant PTSD. We watched it grow month by month, and last year, it crossed onto our land, marching steadily toward our asphalt driveway.

To stop the invasion, our neighbors tried a few “home remedies,” but bamboo laughs at home remedies. My husband and I spent many Sunday afternoons last year chopping it down and burning it—and let me tell you, big, mature bamboo is hollow and explodes when it burns, which adds another level of drama to yard work. It sounded like we were launching fireworks in our yard every weekend, and it didn’t stop the invasion.

Finally, we gave up and hired someone with a forestry mulcher to cut it all down, and my husband has been spraying the area religiously ever since. Yes, we paid our own money to solve our neighbor’s problem, which became our problem, but sometimes you do what you have to do.

Things like bamboo (and kudzu) are nature’s con artists—they seduce you with their beauty, then stage a hostile takeover of everything you hold dear. So if you are thinking about planting a patch of bamboo in your yard, know this: Bamboo doesn’t just grow in your yard—it becomes your yard, and your neighbor’s yard, and your neighbor’s neighbor’s yard, and possibly the next three zip codes. So, take it from me: Don’t do it!