Invasive Orientals

          I rose early to travel out to Olmsted Park with Sean, where we were to volunteer with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy. The park is named after Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park and the Emerald Necklace, among other public spaces. When we arrived, I felt gratefulness wash over me -- the Necklace is a marvelous example of what one person can do with the assistance of earth-moving machinery and a truckload of money. We took the Green Line to Heath Street and were the first to arrive, save for the two volunteer coordinators. We were soon joined by a huge contingent of Northeastern CEP students (why do they always come in a pack?) and a sprinkling of randoms. Our task was tearing out invasive Oriental bittersweet vines, which would quickly prove to be much easier said than done. The vine climbs trees, chokes them to death, and moves along the canopy to destroy entire forests, and judging by the last few calls for volunteers, the Conservancy has been putting in a lot of work to try and halt its progress. Despite being armed to the teeth with shears, clippers, shovels and trowels, our efforts were met with ample resistance from the bittersweet. First off, some of the plants we weren't allowed to destroy were very thorny, which led to numerous nicks and scratches, including two long, thin cuts down the side of my face. The bittersweet itself grows many skinny but tenacious tendrils that wrap around other plants, strangle their growth, and make the vine more difficult to simply pull out. Having disengaged many of these and successfully torn out a few smaller plants, we were feeling confident about our progress. This shifted to frustration and then to horror as we excavated the larger ones and found that they were all connected an inch or two under the soil. Despite being a fast-growing vine, the roots are essentially like those of small trees, and the way the root systems expand is such that it severely hampers their removal. Each plant grows an inch or two down and then expands laterally, growing up in multiple spots and continuing to expand all the while. Each of these offshoots (as well as the thick horizontal roots connecting them) also grows numerous roots which extend downward and severely complicate the task of yanking them out of the ground, even if the lateral connections are snipped. Eventually, following much grubbing around in the dirt, we unearthed a disconcertingly large root ball at the junction of several vines which took about an hour and a half to remove. After Sean and I severed its last artery into the ground, I brushed off most of the dirt to find that it looks disturbingly like a human heart (and is more or less the same size.) The root now occupies a space on my windowsill, and when I look at it out of the corner of the eye, I think I can see it beating.
          After I got home, dirty and tired, I went for a short run with Sean and played some TF2 to unwind. He also came to our second hockey game versus the University of Alabama at Huntsville, which was his own virginal Northeastern hockey game. After the slaughter at last night's game, we were expecting something similarly pitiable, even if Alabama tightened up a bit; my prediction was 6-2. Instead, the game was a narrow 3-2 victory, too close given how badly we shellacked them previously. Since we won anyway, I can now comfortably say that it was a better game, at least. Sean was Joe Cool the whole time, standing like a sentinel at the top of the Doghouse and hardly making eye contact with Alaric or me. Post-game, I watched the timeless FX classic I, Robot with Sean, Peter and Nathan. I've probably seen that movie four or five times, and it is truly never bad (even though it has little and less to do with Asimov's novel beyond the Three Laws.)
          Quote of the day:
JL: "What?"
Me: "Yeah!"
JL: "What?"
Me: "Lil Jon!"

rare footage of Frederick Law Olmsted