Front Yard Invasion: Volunteers in the Garden

My plant-knowledgeable neighbor texts to alert me to the hostile occupation happening in my front yard: “Those invasive elms are noxious,” she says. “Take them out before they take over. You know. Like….fascism.”

Which both chagrins and amuses me. I mean, it’s an apt analogy. But I’d been taking an undeserved modicum of pride in the profusion of these hardy volunteer plants, as if they…