Wisteria
Robert Withers
January 30, 2010
The rhododendron looked like a run-down tenement house in the South Bronx. The stairways were cluttered, the plumbing was leaking, you could see daylight through the roof. Not a light in the building worked. There it was, just waiting for a building inspector to condemn it and the wrecking ball to do its work.
Botanically speaking this took the form of wisteria choking the life out of the rhododendron. It stood at the east entrance of our horseshoe driveway next to a red brick pillar. What should have been an invitation to our new home instead indicated to passersby that the residents cared little for curb appeal.
After we settled in our new home and surveyed our front flower beds we had a decision to make, should we cut the rhododendron down or try to save it? It was a toss-up, for there was as much wisteria as there was rhododendron and it was a large plant, meaning that it would take hours of work to cut away the wisteria and paint the wisteria roots with Roundup so as to inhibit its reappearance. The easy way out was to cut the plant down, to just do it, to take it out and the wisteria along with it, and then find something to fill the space.
But as I looked at the rhododendron I just couldn’t bring myself to cut it down. It had probably been there for thirty years, since the house was built, and I thought that the least I could do was to try to give it another chance. And so with pruners and loppers in hand I went to work. The wisteria was pervasive, and since it too had been there for years, it resisted my attempt to separate it from its host. It was hard dirty work. It was work that had to be done carefully so as not to cut and damage the rhododendron while delivering it from the wisteria.
In many ways my life is like that rhododendron. There have been things in my life choking my growth, inhibiting my development, and strangling me to death – yet Christ never gave up on me when He could have just cut me down and be done with it. I try to be like that with others, to never give up on them no matter how pervasive the wisteria. Of course you do have to be patient and carefully work with the plant and not against it. You want the pruners to cut the wisteria and not the rhododendron – you want to deal with the sin that’s choking the life out of its host and not damage the person. Additionally the herbicide needs to be applied ever so carefully, lest you kill what you are trying to save.
In my younger days I was especially good at cutting down plant and parasite in one swoop, you were either with the program or not. No patience, no focus on the person. I wasn’t looking for the beauty in the rhododendron as much as seeking wisteria to kill, and if the host couldn’t extricate itself from the wisteria that was just too bad for the host. Of course I was unconcerned whether or not I was hosting wisteria of my own.
As I carefully cut away the wisteria from the rhododendron in front of our home I meditated on God’s goodness to me over the years, His amazing patience and mercy; and I thought that considering all that He had done for me that the least I could do is try to save the rhododendron.
But oh…how quickly I forget that I am willing to play the host to the parasite, for you see in our far back yard, adjacent to a board-on-board fence on our property line, there was more wisteria.
After a few weeks I turned my attention to this section of wooden fence that separated our property from our neighbors; wisteria climbing and twisting and pushing the fence boards out of place. I attacked it with my pruners and shovel; I was determined to dig the roots out if at all possible. Upon closer inspection I realized that the roots were on the other side of the fence on our neighbor’s property.
I walked around the fence and up to the neighbor’s back door, introduced myself to the folks, told them that I was working on the fence and asked if they would mind if I worked on their property. They were more than happy for me to do whatever I thought necessary.
This was a dirty and nasty job. There was wisteria and other vegetation all over the place, gnarled between the fence boards, refusing to come out, with roots deep in the earth. My chain saw was necessary to complete the job and I could have used more patience than I exercised in this project. Once it was done I thought that I wouldn’t have to deal with the problem for a few years.
However, after a few months I looked off our back deck at this particular section of fence and saw, to my chagrin, wisteria making its way back up, through, and over the fence. I couldn’t believe it, after all that work it was back. More importantly, I couldn’t believe that the neighbors were letting it grow back to damage the fence. After all, I had cleaned up their side of the fence, the least they could do was maintain it from that point on and not allow the wisteria to grow. As I viewed the bottom of the fence from the deck it was obvious that the wisteria was coming from the neighbors’ yard – why couldn’t they just cut it away before it got out of hand?
For the next few weeks I gazed at the wisteria infiltrating the fence. I kept hoping that the neighbors would deal with the problem; after all it was on their side of the fence. Why should I have to go back into their yard and deal with it? I was in a funk about the fence, the wisteria, and the neighbors. My funk was like a concrete wall, a barrier stopping me from just getting the job done. Finally, after telling myself over and over that I just needed to “do it”, I took pruners and vegetation killer in hand and approached the fence…and found that the offending wisteria was not on the neighbors’ side of the fence, but on my side – and because I had let it grow for weeks I was now faced with yet another wisteria project – one of my own making. But then – aren’t they all?
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