Hoarder

Behind the peeling copper bark of the crape myrtle is a jungle, a mass of green that hides small birds, butterfly caterpillars, and possibly a black snake, although I have never seen it.

Years ago I planted a small tidy garden on that side of the house.  Much of the garden was a single species, a tough native shrub named Virginia sweetspire, that surrounded a musclewood tree sapling.  A few years later, I added a sturdy trellis and planted a single pot of hairy pipevine for the pipevine swallowtail butterflies.

Years went by and the sweetspire inched closer to the downspout and the pipevine twined up the trellis, across the fence, and entwined itself throughout the sweetspire, which by that time had filled the entire side yard of the house.
  

I thought about this secret garden last month, in Indianapolis, where my sisters and I spent a day, sorting through the mail my mother had collected in 72 boxes over the years. 

I flew home with hundreds of greeting cards hidden in my suitcase, enough to fill several shoe boxes.  When I got to the house, I unpacked the cards and hid them in the closet.

I looked around the house for evidence of my own hoarding tendencies. A stack of papers on the kitchen table was of concern, so I wrote checks to charity and recycled the magazines. I gave away two houseplants in large terra cotta pots and some furniture from the attic.   

I looked out the window. The garden, thick and dark, leafy and green with trees, shrubs and vines  spread widely throughout our yard, front to back, side to side.  Multilayered and multispecied, the trees, shrubs and vines grew into and climbed over each other.  It was a verdant mass of green.

I stepped outside, pruners in hand, and walked to the shady side of the house.  I stepped into the tangled mass of Virginia sweetspire, watchful for snakes.  Woodbine had grown up the brick to reach the roof of the house.  I pulled down the tendrils of the vine and cut them off near the ground. It was a hot day, and it was difficult to breathe. When I was finished, I turned around to view a sea of sweetspire. The pipevine floated over the waves like a heavy green fog.   

I went back into the house for the remainder of the day.

A plant hoarder. And my stuff was growing. Every day.

For the next few weeks, thoughts of plant growth, exponentially relentless, haunted me. But one day a few weeks later, the dog started behaving oddly around the Virginia sweetspire, running wildly and barking madly at something hidden inside that hulking pile. As this went on for a week, it became clear that the mystery visitor was not moving on.

I finally saw the twin baby deer walking slowly on thin legs in the neighbors yard.  By the second day, they were running with the white tails of the small herd. Weeks later, the deer roam the neighborhood but they still visit their hidey hole in the Virginia sweetspire. What they do in there is a mystery.

They are unlikely to appreciate that a plant hoarder lives in the house, but I do.