Japanese Knotweed.

“With its attractive appearance and ease of growth, knotweed had been sold and planted in yards around the area — before it was outlawed in 2005.

Today, it’s illegal to move or plant knotweed, but it is legal to have it growing on your property (local ordinances may vary). If you see it in your yard, approach with extreme caution. It’s the Incredible Hulk of plants. Whatever you do, don’t make it angry.

It’s not easy to get rid of. If you mow it down, it spreads. If you dig it up, it spreads. Tiny bits of it can take root anywhere. Toss “dead” knotweed into a compost pile, and that pile becomes your next knotweed patch. If you spray common glyphosate herbicides like Roundup on it, it explodes with growth.

Its indestructibility is explained by the fact the plant evolved to thrive on the volcanoes of Japan. It grows a massive root system, which can be 90 percent of the total plant. The root mass slowly stores up energy for hardship periods, for example, when lava covers it. So you can’t even kill it with hot asphalt–it will eventually burst through. This power makes it into a destructive monster. It can break through pavement, foundations and other infrastructure.” (Taken from https://www.secondwavemedia.com)

I have encountered this plant monster in my own backyard. Monster may seem like an exaggeration for a harmless plant; however, I assure you that knotweed is anything but harmless. We moved into our current home almost three years ago and was completely unaware of what grew in the yard. We moved into the home in late August and I didn’t do much with the existing flower beds except transplant my plant babies that I brought with me from our previous property. Come the next spring, I started weeding out what I didn’t want to stay and made the various existing flower beds into what I desired them to be. Much to my surprise and disappointment, my corner flower bed became a crazy jungle of a thing that I couldn’t seem to get control of. My small corner bench and pretty flowers became over run by these quickly growing stalks. My husband dug up the quick growing stalks only to have more grow up in their place. I decided that I couldn’t beat it so I just ignored the corner and tried to put it out of my mind. It became a jungle that just had me disgusted and scratching my head with wondering what to do with it. When Fall came around and everything was dying off, I decided to transplant all the plants that I wanted to rescue, removed the blocks serving as a border and gave up hopes of taking control of the space.

I was given a galvanized horse trough and planned to use it as a raised garden once we got it full of soil. Thinking that the metal would stop any more growth of this monstrous plant, I put the trough in the corner of the yard. Unfortunately, the plant just traveled under the horse trough and grew up in front of it. UGH! This spring I decided that I would take a picture of the plant with my phone and use the plant identifier and find out exactly what we are dealing with. And you guessed it, it’s Japanese Knotweed. Double UGH! I proceeded to look up how to remove this giant pain from our yard. To my frustration, I learned that it can take multiple years to actually rid our yard of it and it is nearly indestructible. Triple UGH!

As I began to consider the removal of the monstrous plant, it occurred to me that it is a pretty strong visual of sin in our lives and in the world. In the article that I read and quoted above, it said that the plant will behave if it’s not disturbed. If we just leave it be and don’t try to mess with it, it will behave; but if someone attempts to get rid of it, the plant will explode with growth. It seems like the explosion of growth is the plant’s defense mechanism for survival. I am not advocating for just leaving it be to take over it’s surroundings.

It seems to me that undisturbed sinful behaviors in our lives don’t seem to stir up any resistance; however, as soon as our eyes are opened to the sin and we start attempting to evict it from our lives, we experience a barrage of resistance that can get us to consider staying in the past habits because it’s ‘easier’ than dealing with the difficulties of ridding our lives of them. Staying in the sin seems easier because it’s what we know. Living free of sin-filled habits seems scary because it is unknown and the enemy wants us to believe that we are better living in the old way. Sometimes, Satan; in our own voice, will tell us that we don’t deserve a better life; we don’t deserve love; we don’t deserve to be treated better; we will never measure; or any other lie that will trigger something that we believe about ourselves. The Truth is that Jesus died and rose three days latter as the victor over these lies, the sin, and death.

To me, the knotweed is an evil monster. I believe that even Satan had a snippet of good in him because he was created by God and was also the leader of worship before he embraced his evilness. I have read that there are some natural medicinal properties to the knotweed plant. This does not surprise me. It doesn’t change my feelings for the evil plant; I still loathe it just as I loathe the sin in my own life that seems to stay dormant until I resolve to rid myself of it. At that point, it rears it’s ugly head and fights me back to survive in my life. I have not conquered the knotweed in my yard YET; and I have not conquered all the sin in my life YET, but I have resolved that through God’s love, grace, mercy, and His supernatural power and strength, He and I will defeat both. I know this because I know that Jesus defeated my sin with His victorious sacrifice on the Cross at Calvary! The knotweed will not defeat me and neither will Satan because I am a daughter of the King of Kings and creator of all things, including the knotweed!

#hateKnotweed #hateSin #VictoriousInChrist