Loose Parts by Dave Blazek for September 26, 2020

I’d opt for the KUDZU.

kudzu (kuzu in the original japanese – the english misspelling is due to the bizarre way japanese decided to romanize their Z sound in the old days) couldn’t be the one – it doesn’t strangle, it smothers…

I’m surprised they don’t have the oriental bittersweet vine. Now THAT is a strangler.

I don’t see it here, officer, it had teeth and closed its trap…

Number 3, creep forward please.

No honeysuckle?

credenza… Credenza… CREDENZA! Bwahahaha!

“None of those. It was a woman, possibly named Virginia.”

Clematis is beautiful, and I’ve never known to to strangle anything…

How can you put it in a line-up with kudzu, a known pest?

I love wisteria, too… I know it occasionally strangles trees, but it’s pretty controllable…

Ivy does take a bit more work.

Honeysuckle, OTOH, is also beautiful, and has a wonderful scent…

but I had to work hard just to take mine out…

You can’t turn your back on it for a moment, or it’s strangling your roses and creeping into your bedroom window 10 feet away.

Years after I thought I removed it, it still sometimes pops up in new places.

Genius! It was the porcelain berry disguised as a grape vine!

I heard through the grapevine …

Grape vine is the never-ending pest in my yard. I loved the look when I moved in, but when trees started dying I ripped it all out. We have about an acre of woods so it’s hard to be sure you get it all. I eventually had about 4 years free of it, then this year the entire floor of the woods was covered in new grape vine shoots. There was no way to pull them all, I had to settle for pulling the ones on the edges, getting sun. In a case of poetic justice, most died in the shade of the trees they wanted to smother.

mistletoe is quite bad

I thought clematis was a venereal disease.

clematis has always sounded like some dreadful disease to me

Clematis is pretty mild mannered, so it’s a toss up between the other three.

Lamium did it.

How come the strangler fig isn’t in the line-up?

The Virginia Creeper obviously.

Which one is the trunk idiot?

Forgot to include English Ivy.

“It was really more of a ‘gagged’, could you have them turn to the left and look more extinguishing?”

Her husband was the singer Johnny Ash. If he hadn’t died he would tell you the culprit was a boy named Kudzu.

Kudzu will grow feet in a day and wipe out a forest despite all effort. I’ve seen wisteria completely destroy a house despite all effort. No it’s not the same. Destruction is destruction, but you choose; suffocation, strangulation or being crushed.

“It was that one from Boston…”