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Bamboo

I love bamboo, I especially love bamboo forests where you can walk between the poles and it feels secret and mysterious. So naturally, when I was a kid I wanted some. We had bamboo fishing poles, because there were two large stands of bamboo at the sprawling place where my dad worked. I worked on him for a while, and he finally let me bring home a few canes with the roots on and I planted them. It had to be across the road from our house, where no one lived. Bamboo invasive, but it doesn't grow very fast in the climate of Central Virginia. In a warmer climate, the gravel road would not save you. Bamboo shoots would come right up through it. I know that because there was bamboo at the house we bought years later in Alabama. It was one of the reasons I wanted the house. The bamboo was a hedge about 60 ft long and 5 ft wide. There were narrow paths in it going almost from one end to the other. It was glorious. One thing I learned is that the former owners used powerful herbicides, and not just on bamboo, but on everything they didn't want growing where it shouldn't. We didn't do that, so all sorts of things began to come up everywhere, including bamboo. When the bamboo shoots are soft you can break them off with your hand. Unfortunately, the following year the roots will send up slender hard shoots that are not easily disposed of. If you don't keep up with the bamboo on an almost daily basis, pretty soon you will have a bamboo forest. But I didn't mind. I was only sad that my kids didn't enjoy playing in the bamboo as much as I had when I was their age. We did cut a pathway through the middle of the hedge going to the next-door neighbors' house. The kids played together. I don't care for fishing anymore, but quite a few people asked me for canes they could make into fishing poles. We used them in the garden for climbing vegetables and flowers. We don't live there anymore, and I wonder if the new owners have gotten rid of the bamboo, something that is not easy to do without a bulldozer or lots of poison. If they haven't done it and are not paying attention, the backyard and the backyards of three neighbors are all wilderness. Kind of a nice idea really.