The Killing Fields
As we gaze across our brown, dry fields this September (wishing for rain) we see here and there healthy, bright green plants popping up, with lovely, fern-like leaves. How can this be? Everything else has dried up. Even the broom weed is looking dull. The only green in a sea of brown is shaded Bermuda grass and a few hardy weeds.
As we gaze across our brown, dry fields this September (wishing for rain) we see here and there healthy, bright green plants popping up, with lovely, fern-like leaves. How can this be? Everything else has dried up. Even the broom weed is looking dull. The only green in a sea of brown is shaded Bermuda grass and a few hardy weeds.
So dotting the crispy landscape as far as the eye can see are bright green clumps of some lovely, hardy plant. Upon closer inspection, these are, of course, mesquite. (You knew that, didn’t you?) The mesquite we cut at ground level a month or so ago have sprouted angry new growth, intent upon survival. We knew, of course, this would happen, have been waiting for it to happen, yet another ingenious part of our diabolical, murderous plan to decimate every mesquite tree on this place. As the new shoots spring up, they’re easy to see and spray. Once sprayed, it’s simple to return for any overlooked. What we miss before winter we will surely catch next spring when mesquite will be the first green shoot on the horizon.
In spraying a mesquite patch, for every plant you spray on your right, you miss five on your left. You train your eye to differentiate (by subtle nuances of color and texture) between mesquite and anything else. There are only a few weeds at this point that sometimes fool me from a distance. After a long session of spraying mesquite, I can close my eyes and see their leaves — like after a day of picking pecans — when I close my eyes and see nuts).
As you go from one plant to the other, turning this way and that, it’s impossible to spray them all on the first (or second — or sometimes even third) run. Even adding blue dye to the herbicide, you miss so many when you’re dealing with acres and acres of expanse. As you kill these visible plants, others are busy popping up from seed or from the errant root. Who knows how many years mesquite seed is viable? I suspect the half life is at least a century. After all, wheat seeds found buried in an Egyptian pyramid sprouted after three thousand years when presented with moisture. Mesquite certainly must be hardier than wheat. So you spray what you can each time you go out — and hope to live another day to get after it again. (And you hope you have protected yourself sufficiently from the herbicide with clothing, eye protection, gloves, and a mask). I never want to stop once I’ve started, even with the temps close to or over 100 degrees. At that point, I’m probably not responding rationally anyway. Mesquite killing has become sort of an obsession with me. But like Zack always says, “You can’t catch all the mice today.”
The mesquite we had bulldozed (in two stages, three and four years ago) were supposed to stay gone. That’s why you pay the big bucks to the guys with the heavy equipment. But of course, the remnants of those ghost mesquites are now sending up shoots. I’m starting to believe there’s really no such thing as a dead mesquite. What you think is dead is only resting, biding its time for a comeback. It’s amazing how quickly this stuff grows, even with no rain. Anyone who has ever tried to pull up a three inch tall mesquite seedling knows why they’re so hardy. There’s a tap root many times longer than the plant is tall. Like an iceberg, the big stuff’s hidden under the surface.
We’ve sprayed some of these mesquite patches three and four times, over several seasons. We’ve tried various combinations of the recommended products. We’ve used twice the recommended amount. We’ve cut and sprayed, scored and sprayed, sprayed and removed when dead (or at least when we thought they were dead). We’ve sprayed in the intense heat of the summer when the plant is actively growing (recommended by many “experts”). We’ve also sprayed in the fall, as the sap returns to the root, hopefully taking the herbicide along with it. The latter was recommended by OTHER “experts.” (Like my father always said, “If you want ten different opinions, get 10 experts together.”) We were told when we bulldozed that if we pulled up the “knot” or the “heart” of the tree, just below the surface, the tree would not come back. But we’ve had new “scouts” sprout from the roots that broke off that knot and remained behind in the earth.
Our war on mesquite has been costly and time consuming, but also strangely satisfying. We seem to be making a dent in it. Seeing progress keeps me trying. Now mind you, we can’t tackle the entire ranch all at once. We work section by section as we can afford yet another bottle of Remedy, take time out here and there for the occasional major debilitating illness and recovery. AND we do all the other chores and jobs necessary to sustain reasonable life. (At this point, I figure I’m only a year or two behind on most things, maybe longer on some). As we work on these mesquite rich areas, other patches are reproducing and re-sprouting with abandon, like geometric progression. They’re growing faster than the national debt (not so funny a joke these days).
We understand that we will battle mesquite for the rest of our natural lives — and possibly will come back to haunt it after that — not that it will do us much good. Mesquite (along with fire ants and possibly kudzu) will most certainly inherit the earth.
(Gene Ellis, Ed.D is a Bosque County resident who returned to the family farm after years of living in New Orleans, New York, and Florida. She is an artist who holds a doctoral degree from New York University and is writing a book about the minor catastrophes of life.)
