It’s a fabulous season for finding my inner guerilla.  On my morning walk I noticed a bunch of healthy daphne / spurge-laurel beside a wooded trail.

I have a paradoxical relationship with daphne.
I like it because its evergreen, drought tolerant, and deer resistant…
BUT the Coastal Invasive Species Committee call it invasive.
AND daphne has poisonous berries & wicked toxic sap that irritates eyes & skin.
BESIDES that – – there are less offensive options to replace daphne.

The rainy season & my mood convinced me that today I didn’t like it.  So I decided to pull some daphne closest to the trail edge & my gloved hands.

I braced my feet,
bent my knees,
gripped the main stalk,
and PULLED.

Lo & behold the daphne slipped out of the ground easily!  Roots and all!  Woo hoo!

I felt like pounding my chest & letting out a guerilla roar!

I moved to another… and another.   🙂

A young daphne has one primary root, so in winter’s wet soil it pulls out readily.  If it’s a couple of years older, it has more developed roots securing it in the ground .  Even so, it comes out without much trouble at all!

In about 10 minutes I pulled 86 daphne!
(Seriously!!  I counted.)

There were more still standing beside the trail but I had places to go…
so I left those behind for another day.

This is certainly the best time of year to conquer daphne.

I reckon I’ll add a little daphne pulling to my morning walk.

How’s this for an exercise regimen:

• get fit
• roar like a guerilla
• AND conquer an invasive!

Why not?

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© SVSeekins and Garden Variety Life, 2014