Discover Wellness

April 17, 2024

As spring progresses, many of you in CIPM are sharing stories about your fun outdoor activities. I want to share a post with stories and photos from this challenge, so please send me your pictures from the gym, neighborhood walks, pickleball games, local races, Tai Chi in the park, or exercise classes. Selfies welcome! I have a lot of pictures from our trip to Costa Rica and Danesha pointed out on Friday that our hike in the Antonio Manuel National Park put us at 6.5 MILES for that day, and  I will be sharing more about that trip next week. I can’t wait to hear what you all have been up to! This week, I thought I would give you all an entertaining chuckle at my current nemesis, and my exhausting efforts in the classic conflict of (Wo)man vs. Nature.

These days, my outdoor routine is often working in my new yard. In the past, I spent many hours a week training for races, coaching swimming, and wrangling children, and I found the best way that I could ground myself and keep my wits about me was through time out in the fresh air and sunshine. This year I bought a new house, and the children and I have spent this winter settling in. Now that spring is here, most of my outdoor activity is devoted to working on my new yard, and I have had to address an issue that many of you have expertise in… an invasive plant.

I know invasive plants are a hot topic issue that the scientists here in CIPM probably know a lot more about than I do as a layperson. While many of you are working on PestLens or EIPM or any of the dozens of projects addressing problems in invasives, my horticulture expertise is mostly what I have gleaned from y’all and half-listening to my mom when she pointed out the flowers in her gardens. I have spent the last several months trying to manage my pest with advice from some of you, as well as your groans of empathy and some creative thinking, and I think I will still be fighting this pest long after I retire (in 20 years). I will be puttering around my yard with my dogs and tortoise and cutting down bamboo with my trusty mini chainsaw well into my old age. My mother always told me that gardening is the best form of exercise, and I would laugh at her as I rushed off to the YMCA to put in another 2500 yards of freestyle or a gentle yoga class. But since I came to Pittsboro, I find myself looking for solutions to my bamboo problem, and I am sweating more in this garden than I EVER did in a workout class, even through those crazy days of hot yoga in 90-degree studios.

When I was house-hunting, I wanted to be close enough to the water that I could use a lot of my leisure time swimming and paddling, so I found a place in Pittsboro. I missed being able to plant peppers and greens for my tortoise, and my insatiable hunger for fresh cucumbers straight from the garden, so I really wanted a house with a yard. When I looked at this house, one of the first problems I found was that the back fence was surrounded by full-grown bamboo. I had seen it overtake yards in my old neighborhood, so I wondered, was this a problem I was willing to take on, with just me and my 18-year-old son to tackle it? Would I lose my mind as I tried to tame this jungle? Bamboo is literal torture—this was even covered in a famous episode of MythBusters in 2008. I am not advocating for torture, but for the sake of science, Savage and Hyneman created an experiment to prove its effectiveness in causing the most merciless pain (don't worry-- they used a dummy for this). Now I am finding bamboo has another way that it tortures people; I am calling this “Extreme Gardening.” It is exhausting for my 5’3” body to wrestle 20+ft tall shoots of bamboo through the dense grove I have at the rear of my yard. Some weeks I am sore for days after digging and pulling up roots or even just clearing out the dense undergrowth, and my pottery teacher has asked that I not use Sundays for weeding because then my hands are too tired to work the clay on Monday. I have spent many hours this winter cutting it down and stripping the leaves to make poles for various uses, but I only need a small number of garden stakes for my personal use. So, what do you do with bamboo, which grows at a rate of several FEET a year? I’ve seen various tutorials online for making planters, windchimes, water features, fences, and tiki bar-themed outdoor spaces. I’m sure I will use some of it to build a border to keep my son’s new puppy out of the garden, but there is a LOT of bamboo back there, so I will still have more left after I finish that project. No matter how many DIY ideas I find, I will still have more bamboo than I know what to do with, so I will just have to focus on removal as of right now.

In the future, what am I to do to keep this from overtaking my yard? I asked Danesha if I should get a flamethrower (JOKING!!), but the USDA site pointed out that a controlled burn could in fact stimulate growth. Also, because the bamboo stalks are hollow and very moist, and the juices are slightly oily, they tend to explode when burnt, so that technique is not advisable. I have put the leaves in my fire pit to try to get rid of some of the accumulating litter, and it smokes a lot. I have researched different ways to stop it, and from my extensive googling and conversations with CIPM folks, the best way to stop it entirely is to treat it with Roundup solution (being wary of my pollinator plants and vegetables) and continuing to manage the shoots that return over time. I have also heard that to keep the roots from spreading, I will need to dig a large trench and put in a barricade such as high-density polyethlene or gravel, but that will be a more long-term solution when I have the time and money to invest. For right now, I am just pulling up the roots where it is growing against my house and cutting down the new shoots along the fence. But like many of the invasive pests that you all are working with, I will never be completely rid of my bamboo problem. I try to look on the bright side, as it does provide a little barrier from the rooster crowing behind me. In the meantime, if anyone needs some new garden arches or trellises, or wants to build a Tiki Bar, I will have plenty available as I prepare my yard for spring each year.

So out of curiosity, do you consider gardening and yardwork an exercise regime, self-care, or just a necessary evil of suburban life? How do you like to get outside and enjoy the spring weather?

Happy Gardening! 

Carrie

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