A curling green tendril climbs from its’ birthing nest of rotting bird ****
The creeper wends its’ way up round and around the stalk of its’ slender tree host. Leading vigorously ever upward, it climbs toward the light of day. Upon bursting through to the sunshine, it explodes into a huge and suffocating dominance. Wrapping its’ leaders tightly together, writhing skyward, smothering all else. Blotting out the sun. Inhibiting its’ host tree, ultimately killing it ...and every other living plant located below it.

In late summer the creeper produces bunched, masses of frothy, green, seeded florets. Clouds of green plumed waxeyes flock en mass, to flutter, competing ravenously to feast on the banks of seed heads.
Once replete, with full crops, the tiny birds fly off to distant shaded woods there to indiscriminately drop their ****, unknowingly further spreading the insidious creeper pestilence.

I trudge through my wooded glades,
Indignantly I sever taproot after taproot with my trusty sharp blade
….and watch that creeper limply sag and die
With a glint of satisfaction in my grim and vengeful eye.

M.
6 February 2016
Foxglove farm, Taranaki, NZ