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The Wanted Poster

Do you ever invent stuff to do when you’re bored? I mean there’s always something to do, but you don’t really want to vacuum the house again, or do another load of laundry, and you just know that if you try reading something in the middle of the day, you’ll doze off. Even dusting is tedious and requires finding your Covid mask because… well, there’s a lot of unrequited dust around these days.

Anyway, sometimes you just have to think outside the box -okay, the house- so that’s what I did the other day. On one of my walks along a favourite trail, I happened upon a poster tacked to a bridge spanning a little creek. I hadn’t noticed it before because I usually cross the creek on a log (it’s a guy thing, eh?), but that time I happened to be talking to a dog I’d met along the path who insisted on following me; for its sake, I forsook the log. Unfortunately the dog suddenly spotted its owner on the trail ahead though, so I was left alone on a bridge with a picture and a warning on it. Bereft of company I read the sign but, unlike the usual posters tacked on bulletin boards in the nearby supermarket, this time I was struck by the resemblance of some plants depicted on it to those in the tiny pond by my front porch at home. I didn’t realize that mine had a name that lived in botanical infamy: the yellow flag irises -besides, I’d always thought my plants were lilies… And what sent guilty shivers up my spine, was that these were rogue, invasive irises that are apparently famous for taking over whatever waterways in which they dip their roots.

To be clear, I don’t wish to lay blame on anybody in particular for their presence; I hope they weren’t a reprisal for something I’d done. They’re actually quite nice at first glance, and I’m sure whoever planted them had the best of intentions. It’s just that, thinking back over the years, I’m pretty sure the original plants were waterlilies -the kind with big flat horizontal floating green leaves. I remember that at the time I’d relived my childhood fantasies of faeries dancing on them, and frogs sitting around the edge of the pool like parents watching their kids playing water polo. But the change was gradual, I suppose: I didn’t notice that the lilies had started mutating into tall, thin, vertically waving leaves inching towards the porch.

At first it was just a moderate little pond with bushes growing around the edge and over the years, any of the goldfish I’d dumped in there who had managed to evade the herons and snakes would have had lots of room to swim and hide; I was proud of that. But I didn’t notice the hidden creep of roots slowly capturing the pond, and I assumed the fish were swimming happily beneath the waving fronds, gorging themselves on mosquito larvae in the best of all worlds… Rationalization is a skill that develops with age, and my retirement had brought it into full blossom.

Still, sometimes enough is enough; sometimes the victim, not the plant, must stand tall. It was in that poster moment that I stretched myself to my full five and a half feet and planned revenge on the irises. I would wreak vengeance not only for the fish constrained by the roots, not only for the shrinking pond, and not even for the property devaluation the irises might have on resale should I require resettlement in an extended care facility, but mainly for me.

Apparently getting rid of them is hard and fraught with complications, though: skin irritation from the sap, dirty water splashing over cracked, aging rubber boots, and worsening arthritis from attempting to pull the roots out with seniored hands unaccustomed to anything harder than ripping the cellophane off boneless chicken breasts bought on sale because their best-before-dates had been exceeded.

Anyway, after pecking at the irises with lawn clippers which I kept dropping, and then in frustration, slashing wildly at their stems with a knife, I realized I could not possibly get at the roots. They had melded into an impervious porridge even thicker than what my mother insisted I eat for breakfast during the Winnipeg winters of my childhood. It occurred to me that I may have taken on a project that was too big for me to handle without expert guidance, or medical counsel.

It sort of reminded me of a problem I once had with burdock in my fields a few years ago: it not only coated the wool of the sheep I had at the time, but my dog used to come home loaded with burrs that stuck to my couch and carpets. I mean burrs are not as bad as worms or anything, but still, at the end of the summer, I used to have to shear the dog.

Anyway, I eventually solved one particular area of concern around a large old fir tree where the sheep, the dog, and the burdock all used to congregate. In a flash of insight for which I am still proud, one autumn when the sheep and dog were hanging out in a different field, I put a large tarp over the burdock and the next spring the burdock was gone. Okay, it had moved elsewhere in the same field, but I had demonstrated proof of concept.

I figured what had once been sauce for the goose would also be sauce for the irises so when the building supply center opened the next morning I went looking for a small tarpaulin. The exposed pond floor now covered in roots was ideal; I could leave it undisturbed until next spring.

I was proud of my innovative thinking, and mentioned it to the clerk behind the counter who was ringing in the blue water-coloured tarp I’d chosen. Although he was smiling, he kept shaking his head.

“Works for burdock, G,” he said, trying his best not to deflate my ego “But them yellow-flaggers’ll outwait you…”

I shrugged and tried not to notice the twinkle in his eyes. “I figure I’ll leave it on the pond over the winter though, eh?” But his head didn’t stop shaking. I wondered whether he had some sort of neurological thing, so I pretended not to notice. “That should be enough, don’t you think?”

No change in his expression.

“I mean, I can’t dig out the roots, because they’re too dense… And anyway, even if I could dig them out, it would destroy the liner which coats the pond to keep the water in…”

“Better buy a green tarp then, G,” he said, his head no longer shaking.

“Why green?” I asked, curious whether it had special properties with yellow flag irises.

“‘Cause you’re gonna have to leave it there for years, and you might want to pretend it’s just grass if anybody asks.”

But he was right, you know. The green tarp looks great in there, and with the little bit of residual water peeking out from under the edge, it’s like I’ve bought one big lily pad for the pond.

No faeries using it yet, though…

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