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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!