The jungle

As a member or the LFA Board, and the one living closest to the dam, I have been made responsible for overseeing the dam.  Which fits squarely within my qualifications as a rusty scholar of Russian Literature and a financial advisor to a growing host of wooly Chapel Hillians, Brooklynites, and the like.

Soon, we will have an engineer come and examine the dam, which was apparently put there in the 30s as part of a CCC project.  Because it was so far back, and there aren't really great records, we're not really 100% sure how it's constructed.  But we do know it has been faithfully restraining 70-odd acres of water, going as deep as 16 feet, for a long time.

The thing is, this being the south, and it being rather moist, plants like to grow.  And since there are little crannies in the stones and mortar which form the exterior of the dam, plants like to grow there. In particular vines. Rather aggressive ones at that. I'm sure they have a name, I'm just not very good with plant names.

What I have gotten rather decent at, however, is ripping the plants from the face of the dam. It is difficult, however, to kill the bastards.  I took all that crap down sometime last year, maybe September, and I looked at the dam today and the damned things had grown right back up the face of the dam.  So I weed-whacked a little, and got down to the roots as best I could, but I know that the fact of the matter is that they'll be growing right back up the dam, because there's no way I can really get down to the roots, which are hidden down beneath a bunch of rip-rap.  Together with, if I am to believe the young fisherman with rather ornate moustaches who was there today, at least one copperhead.

It really is a freaking jungle out there, in short.  Plants just grow. And we have to cut them back, and then do something with the stuff we cut off.  It's a never-ending process, a no-win situation.  Which is why I sometimes think it would be better to get out of this land-owning business.