"Why do you get so upset about invasive plants, Sarah? What's the big deal, it's just a plant.
It's not taking over *my* yard."
All of these plants started off in someone's garden with the best of intentions:
Black Locust, Norway Maple, Chinese Wisteria, Oriental Bittersweet, Privet, Rose of Multiflora, Wintercreeper, Burning Bush, Amur Honeysuckle, Japanese Barberry, Garlic Mustard, Greater Celandine, Creeping Jenny, Creeping Charlie, Purple Deadnettle, Hairy Bittercress.
I have every single one of them on my property. I'm sure there's more I haven't identified. It's an invasive wasteland that isn't the right forage for birds. Isn't the right habitat for butterflies and bugs.
It isn't right.
You know what struggles to stay on my property? Jack-in-the-Pulpit. False Solomon's Seal. Pretty little Cranesbill (wild geranium). Canada mayflower.
Even the grapevine was struggling against the bittersweet and wisteria until I got proactive.
The berries of the honeysuckle and bittersweet aren't nutritionally right for birds. Garlic Mustard and Norway Maple change the chemical composition of the soil so that nothing else wants to grow where they are. Bittersweet and Wisteria kill trees.
Everything else bullies out something that ought to be there.
I've spent weeks over the past few years cleaning up other people's pretty disaster. Cutting, pulling; in some cases poisoning.
I contributed to the spread myself, before I knew. Now I know and I see it everywhere.
This is why I've become so passionate about invasives and the damage they do, and why I'm holding my breath right now, because you see, I have worms.
Asian Jumping Worms, to be precise.
Last Saturday I got a good head of steam up and went to move the last of the 6 yards of dirt out of my driveway that I had ordered back in March.
3.5 yards was already in the front flowerbed.
1 was already spread down by the side of the road in an attempt to get anything but weeds to grow.
.5 had been used to patch holes around my yard.
That left about a yard to move.
I approached the pile, gloves on and wheelbarrow ready, when I noticed a lot of worms gathered around the edge. Usually if earthworms are in the way of my chore I pitch them out into the lawn so either the birds eat them or they escape down into the turf. I picked up a worm with gloved hand and went to lob it into the grass when it *Flipped Out.*
Not a typical worm, "hey, leave me alone as I slinky my way back to the dirt" move. This was a full bodied, full fledged spastic flail.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh dear.
Back in the winter I'd read an article about a new invasive worm, the "Asian Jumping Worm". Popular for fish bait (because of their movement) and vermiculture (because they are voracious) they had escaped captivity and were starting to run amok in forests in the southern states. They love moist leaf litter and reduce the leafy ground cover in a crazy short amount of time, displacing other worms and salamanders, and generally being really bad neighbors.
And now I thought I had one freaking out in my hand.
I Googled. I found a contact at UMass who studies the buggers. I shot video of my suspect worm, (harder than you think), and sent it to her. I pulled out as many worms as I could find and put them in a soup can. I waited.
She emailed me back and said that yes, it looked like a suspect worm, and could she come take a sample? She was welcome to all the worms she wanted as far as I was concerned.
Yesterday she and her assistant arrived. She flipped some of the worms out of my can and verified that it did indeed look like a young jumping worm. She took my can of worms, told me to cover what I could with black plastic to kill them with heat and just keep an eye on the rest. Send her pictures if anything looked suspicious.
So this weekend I'm going to bag up and plastic over what I can. I'm going to dig a shallow trench between the flower bed and the woods, and see if I can fill it with sharp gravel. (Yes, I'm going to build a moat around my worms.) There's no way plastic will work there because it's too shady.
I was at war with the invasive plants.