Buddleia Wars

The buddleia wars began in earnest yesterday, and 

possibly claimed the first victim in the way spelling’s 

antiquated by a ‘j’; buddleja is the genus name, that 

is after Rev Buddle supposedly - but we’ll leave it to 

purists whomever to wrangle with; our mission, - by 

fair means or foul - is to civilise this butterfly bush - 

but in exposing our reputations we’re bowed by the 

magnitude of what seemed an easy task 

She claims only five years since its last trimming, an 

entangled & intertwined fete that will endow us a no-

quarter contest, making our efforts all be considered 

rudimentary failures; there’s no way we can beat its 

intermeshed & free-range confidence into a hedge; 

so maybe a bulldozer is the easy out 

But there’s no case to answer; & we’ll crawl our way 

into the mesh with hand-wielded secateur & pruning 

shears held at the high port, cutting it frond by frond, 

then try and drag cut lengths free such as combined 

strength’ll disport, but so far it’s taught us we are all 

pretty much constrained to the losing team … 

© 29 December 2015, I. D. Carswell