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The Vines of Death

Taming the jungle — Day 2

Stefani Vader
Weeds & Wildflowers
2 min readDec 23, 2024

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photo by author

I worked on the berry patch a little more. The area I weeded was around the second thorn-less blackberry bush. You’d think that would be safe, right?

Wrong!

I’m down on my hands and knees reaching around the backside of the hibernating bush, trying to pull out the weeds between it and the fence when the vines first attacked.

First, the handful of weeds stuck me right through my gloves. When I yanked my hand back the nasty wild blackberry vines attacked my sweatshirt, grabbing on and holding me in place.

So, there I was, my head under the bush, my arm stretched out in front of me, held captive. I tried to scrunch down so I could reach with my other hand to pull the vine out of my sweatshirt when my hair got caught on one of the branches of the bush.

Now my head was stuck, an arm was stuck and I the one free hand I had at that point was holding me up.

Can I tell you how frustrated I was? After sitting there for a minute going over my options, I finally faced the fact that I was going to have to back out slowly and face whatever pain there was.

I slowly inched myself back as a few hairs were ripped out of my head and my sweatshirt was being scraped by every thorn on the stupid vine. By the time…

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Weeds & Wildflowers
Weeds & Wildflowers

Published in Weeds & Wildflowers

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Stefani Vader
Stefani Vader

Written by Stefani Vader

Lover of reading and writing. Hater of retail work. Small fish in a big pond, learning as I go.

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