THE BAMBOO WAR

The bamboo killer

Spending time at our house in France doesn't mean just play - we also need to get down to some serious work. We do not have a garden as such, the point being to keep the property as manageable as possible considering we're not there all the time. But we've been having an invasion of bamboo over the past couple of years, and it really is practically impossible to get rid of. Beautiful to look at - at first - but now I've come to HATE it! Deep aggressive HATE! I've checked around on how to KILL it permanently, and I think it'll be a long and exhausting process. My neighbour, who has a long and ongoing battle with it both on our property and his own, suggests TNT, and to be frank I'm about to follow his suggestion. If it isn't for the fact that TNT will uproot our houses as well...

Above is the only "green" patch left on our patio, and it's going to be terraced over very soon! It too is being taken over by bamboo, and it won't help to just cover the weeds with plastic and believe that this will kill the bamboo roots. Oh no. In our dreams maybe. The bamboo will rise and grow through the plastic easy as pie, proud and strong and MOCKING us all! So the general idea is to dig up the roots sometime during this winter and murder them once and for all. Another piece of advice I got was to paint the severed trunk IMMEDIATELY with weed killer, because within 15 seconds the sap withdraws back into the roots and lurks there to strike anew!

On our property we have an olive tree, and after I'd googled bamboo killing, I needed some respite from the depressing world of weeds and decided to google olive pickling and preservation. Also a long process, but a much more pleasurable one. Removing olive stones, putting them in brine, repeating the process again and again. This apparently gets rid of the bitter taste that olives have straight from the tree (in fact you cannot eat them straight from the tree). Then finally adding herbs and spices if you like.

These olives will turn black when ripe in a few weeks

Some years ago I read the Trilogy of the Olive Farm by the English actress Carol Drinkwater, about her olive farm just north of Cannes, fantastic books that not only describe the love and life among ancient olive trees but also the hardships of reconstructing and making an old farm work. A lot of romantic notions are shattered!

I notice that my blog post today is flooded with capital letters and exclamation marks. Like I said in yesterday's blog post I needed to get something (else) off my chest - and today it was the impending War on the Bamboo.

But fruit is nice - gift from another neighbour's garden. Figs and grapes. Mmmm.....