BINDWEED

The thing that seems to grow with the most success in my little garden is a thing that we like to call Bindweed.

It is not, emphatically NOT, Japanese Knotweed, which is another horticultural horror entirely and with which we have, as far as we can ascertain, not yet been plagued with, although it would be rather difficult to be absolutely sure without hacking back at all of the overgrowth.

Meanwhile, I am getting rather fond of the old Bindweed, despite the fact that I'm constantly being told not to touch it with my bare hands.

Perhaps it's just because I like the sound of the word...?

"Bindweed"

It really does sound like a word out of Dickens.

A clerk working in a particularly unseemly solicitor's office, or a debt collector, or some kind of pawnbroker...?

The most fascinating thing about it, of course, is how quickly it seems to shoot up. No sooner have you uncoiled a length of it from around pretty much anything and everything you've left outside, than another tendril seems to have replaced it before you've even had time to blink or boil a kettle for that alfresco cup of coffee you've decided to treat yourself to.

I do get the impression that, if you watched it, you might actually be able to see it grow, which might seem fanciful, but is probably what inspired all those old TV shows in which the plants went wild and started throttling the humans (in much the same way as the Bindweed seems to enjoy throttling all of our other plants), sometimes even without the benefit of any help from a Diabolical Master Mind...

Anyway, I'm trying to learn to love the stuff, as it really seems to be the only plant that does seem to thrive thanks to the intervention of my turquoise thumbs. One of the lessons I'm beginning to learn about our garden is that things seem to grow far better by being neglected by me than they ever manage if I actually try and put the effort in.

What does bewilder me, though, is why, when they'll happily chew anything we buy from the Garden Centre right down to the soil, sometimes before we've even got around to taking it out of the pot and putting it into the ground, those blessed slugs and snails won't munch upon the Bindweed, seeing as it is by far the most profligate food source in the entire area of our own little postage stamp of green.