You may have heard the story about Junior.
Junior was a jade plant, purchased for my mother by my father shortly after their marriage.
At around age 10 or 12, Junior lived on a desk in my room, near the window. I decided that the plant, although large and healthy, would do better with fertilizer. What nutrients do plants need? Why, the same ones humans do.
Including salt, which was handily located in the medicine cabinet.
As the plant sickened and died, I thought that it clearly needed more fertilizer.
As more and more of the plump leaves turned grey and fell off, my parents gathered around the venerable jade plant in my room. "I don't understand," my mother said. "It was doing so well for so long, and now it's just..."
"Yeah," I added, extremely puzzled. "And I was fertilizing it, too."
The sudden laser-like attention that garnered engendered a sudden feeling of dread.
An explaination was requested; I explained what I'd been up to. My parents shook their heads - upset, certainly, but not angry, since I'd acted in total ignorance. "Haven't you ever heard of Hannibal?" my father asked, baffled. "Who sowed Carthage with salt?"
I had not. My grounding in Greek and Roman mythology was fine, but classical history lay in my future.
Flash forward almost twenty years.
There is illict bamboo growing around the trailer. Under the trailer. Through the trailer, once. Certainly through its skirting and up from under the back deck.
I had forgotten Junior by then; my friend Mary had to remind me how well salt kills plants, without adding weird chemicals to the ground. For two weekends now, I've been pouring salt water down on the bamboo under the deck.
The bamboo dies.
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