The garden has never looked better. It’s what’s known as a mature garden. Would that this was echoed in its owners! There’s a tree I planted about 20 years ago, thinking it was an elderberry bush, (It’s not, evidently.) that is engulfing the northeast corner of the house. Its beautiful, light green, feathery-leaved branches are nudging up against the red roof. In a wind storm it makes weird noises. We look at each other and think it’s the second coming. Then we remember what it is and exchange a smug little smile.

The same thing is happening at the northwest corner of the house. My son threw a bunch of horse chestnut conkers off the ledge of his bedroom window; it must be 17 years ago now. This tree is also taller than the house and makes weird grawnching noises against the tin roofing in storms, with the added bonus, the last few years, of the thunking of conkers hitting the roof at odd moments. “What was that?” And, I remember.

On the southeast corner, right in front of the deck, there’s a cottonwood tree I dug up from an empty lot in Courtenay. It came from where Liquidation World now stands. I wanted it for the perfume of its leaves in the spring and the rustling noise the wind makes through its leaves. Also the way sunlight glistens off the shiny leaves. The twig that was as thick as my pinky and as high as my thigh now towers thirty feet above the roof and threatens to fall on it in aforementioned storms. So, all in all, on a dark and stormy night, we have quite the night of it. But I wouldn’t be without any of them, although they hamper home expansion possibilities from all directions. (A septic field blocks the fourth side.) I feel a motherly pride as I gaze up at them. They are my babies. “Well done!” I tell them. “You are beautiful and strong!” “Likewise,” they lie to me.

The rest of our trees are a geriatric, arthritic assortment of apple trees and a Bartlett pear. They are over 100 years old, and full of woodpecker holes. I don’t know what keeps them going. They seem to have some inner drive to just keep producing apples, and in the case of the pear, 10 pears. Go figure. There are 12 of them, so it’s far too many apples for one family, or now, one middle-aged couple. I should have more kind thoughts towards them, but I feel them tied to the past and another era. They’re in league with the ghost in the log cabin. I know it. It tempers my affection for them. They prefer the ghost. They see us as interlopers. Ungrateful, really, after all the pruning and moss scraping. (But, trees can be like that.)

Garden vases are sprinkled throughout the garden, empty. They look just as nice with nothing in them, if a tad pretentious. It’s too much trouble to plant something in them just to make them look less pretentious. There’s a mirror hanging on the side of an outbuilding, an old dresser mirror. It enlarges the garden. So, it’s all very pretty.

And then there’s the Giant Hogweed. Neither one of us can remember where it came from, but it was planted with care near the side gate a couple of years ago. Last year it limped through its paces and kept shedding huge, yellowed leaves. This spring I mentioned to my husband that it might need some compost spreading around it to give it a boost, and more water than we gave it last year. Well, it’s boosted. It’s higher than the 6 foot fence now and shows no sign of letting up. I don’t know what made me first feel apprehensive towards it. Maybe it was the purplish patches on the thick turgid stems. They are the thickest stems, outside of a tree trunk, I’ve ever seen. (Inside of a tree trunk it’s too dark to see. Ha Ha.) They must be 4 inches across. And the vitality of the whole plant, with its massive leaves and big pod-like new leaves on top of ever-growing stems, just started to seem monstrous and threatening. Come back the next day and he’s grown a foot. If my trees were telling me white lies, this thing was contemplating murder by strangulation. (By poisoning, as it turns out.) I’ve never felt frightened of a plant before. Touching it became out of the question. “Go on, touch me,” it taunted. What was this malevolent plant in my garden?

Well, it was, like I said, Giant Hogweed. I remembered a friend telling us how he was doing battle with a plant along his stream bed. It had burned and created lasting scars on his arms. The name drifted back to me through the mists of the intervening 6 weeks. Dashing to my trusty computer I typed in Giant Hogweed, and received a world of woe. This plant is one of the most toxic in North America. Kids have gone blind from playing telescope with the stems. The juice is practically a killer. Phrases like “cigarette burn-like scars” leapt off the page.

How can we kill it? (Without giving it prior warning.) This becomes the question of the hour. It’s too tall to throw a blanket over it and whack away with machetes. If we burn it, we burn the fence. And we release those toxins, to be breathed in. We can’t let it breed. Seed heads must be whacked off. No more water for Mr. Giant Hogweed, I don’t think. Of course as I type, there’s a torrential rain coming down. What to do?…What to do? All suggestions will be appreciated. We’re not so smug now. Suddenly it’s Grey Gardens, revisited.