a story of survival

[piranha]

ever since we've lived here, there was a grapevine rootstock around the corner of the house, in the bed infested with bindweed. since the paramour's window has no shade in the summer, i used to train a couple of vines around the corner and let them go wild, so they'd cover the window. the first few years i'd cut back all the vines in the winter, and then train new ones the coming spring. the last 3-4 years i was too depressed to care what those vines did, and cut them back haphazardly in the spring (this did not improve the grape harvest).

last year the landlord killed the entire bed because he wanted to build a car port between our shack and the missile silo. less than half a square foot of soil remained at the very front of the new concrete, with some lemon balm. i was gonna take a cutting from the vine before he murdered the root stock, but that never happened. in protest (or something), i left the last grown vines up, and this spring, well, cutting back also didn't happen. desolately barren vines scraped against the window. i bought some bamboo to provide shade (but it's not fast-growing, so this year it's not providing much of anything. i also haven't repotted it yet. *sigh*.

anyway, imagine my surprise when the barren vines set buds. and leafed out. and bloomed. and now we have more grapes than we had the years before. the two vines i had trained around the corner rooted themselves in that postage stamp of soil that's still left, hidden by the lemon balm.

Comments

[red_trillium]

I liked the photo and loved the story around it. Thank you for sharing.