Those of you from the South, the deep South, will find this amusing. The rest of you may be befuddled, or bored, but if you ever come down here keep this story in mind.
The Boy and I went camping this week to Vogel state park. Vogel is a beautiful state park located just inside of the Chattahoochee National Forest. You can paddle around the lake and watch the clouds alternately reveal and obscure the peaks of the mountains that crowd together to form the park. There is trail access to the AT, Blood Mountain, Coosa Bald and Slaughter Gap. And in this 233 acre park there are more species of trees than there are in Yellowstone’s 2.2 million.
Now boy and I were in the Visitor’s center paying for our miniature golf when I hear this exchange from the other counter.
Visitor: “On the way in we saw these vines. They were covering the trees. Do you know what that is?”
Park attendant: “Probably kudzu.”
Visitor: “Why doesn’t somebody do something about it? Do you just not care? It looks like it’s going to kill the trees.”
At this point I ushered Boy out of the visitor’s center and stiffled my laughter.
Now those of you who grew up in the Deep South are laughing to yourselves, and the rest of you wondering why doesn’t someone do someting about it if its going to kill the trees. So in an attempt to edify, I am going to pass on some southern lore.
During the Great Depression the Federal Government of the United States paid workers through the Civilian Conservation Corps to plant kudzu to control erosion, it also subsidized the planting of kudzu by farmers. I suppose that if controlling erosion is thing you’re concerned with then the planting od kudzu was a success. However, in the south kudzu grows at an alarming rate, up to a foot a day, and is impossibly hard to kill. Herbicides have little effect, fire doesn’t kill it, it doesn’t freeze hard enough in the south to kill it, you can mow it but at a foot a day mowing is a full time job. So we do what we can, but we can’t get it all.
The moral of this story is: when you go somewhere new get to know the culture, before you get uppity with the locals. Oh, and it’s my understanding that they have the same problem with english ivy in the Pacific Northwest.