Cutting Back the Ivy

Out in the front yard, my stand of sunflowers is beginning to fade, as Fall approaches and summer says a long slow goodbye.  The stand is still standing, which wasn't a guaranteed thing.  

A big storm recently blasted through, bringing down the little apple tree that grows right next to the sunflowers.  But the flowers, with a little forethought, are still beautiful, if a bit battered.  The tallest ones no longer tower vertically, now canting discernably southward towards the nearby sidewalk, having been pressed hard by near-hurricane-force gusts.

But not a one of them fell.

The reason: other plants grow in that sunflower patch.  Milkweed and common pokeweed are intermingled with the stalks, adding their flowers to pollinator buffet.  And woven densely through all of it is a densely interwoven tangle of wild grape and porcelainberry vines.  

Between the two of them and left to their own devices, those two vines will smother just about everything else around them.  Their vines snake up the sunflower stalks at a remarkable rate, growing inches a day.  I've thought about rooting them out completely, but they serve a particular purpose.

Instead, once a week or so, I'll wander by the sunflowers and trim away any vines that get within a foot or two of the flowering tops.  My assumption, when I began that process a few years ago, had been that the vine growth would help stabilize the sunflowers without my having to put in metal stakes and support structures.  I'd had one whole patch that I'd staked flattened by high wind years ago, so figured I'd try the natural approach.

The recent storm tested that hypothesis, successfully so.  The complex interwoven mass of vines gave stability to the helianthus.  None were lost, even if they do look a little worse for wear.

That does, of course, come with a caveat.  That organic support structure desires to make more of itself.  If I'm not careful and attentive to cut away that which is not necessary, eventually all I'd have is a huge green mass of ivy, ivy growing upon ivy.  Sucking away nutrient resources, strangling out all other life around it and smothering the flowers this gardener intended them to strengthen.

A bit like bureaucrats and administrators, I found myself thinking.