Get Out Your Hatchet

There's a house in that there kudzu! (Photo, William Christenberry)

Nobody seems to care about kudzu, yet the sweet-smelling invasive vine brought here in 1876 as a "gift" from the Japanese is slowly overtaking the planet. (Remember Pearl Harbor?) I look and I look, yet it's never in the news. Today's paper is full of the pregnant Duchess of York, her "severe morning sickness" obliterating her new hairstyle from the minds of the increasingly mindless Brits, who are now all atwitter about what the baby's gender and name might be. Which reminds me: Over in Italy, the Pope is getting ready to tweet in eight languages. Actually, it's only somebody who knows His Most High-hatted Holiness that will tweet in his name, boiling down his "pearls of wisdom" to 140 characters a pop---or should I say a pope?

Meanwhile, when last I drove south, that sneaky kudzu was creeping along the Saw Mill Parkway on its way to infiltrating the Bronx. Next stop Times Square? Kudzu has already conquered the southeastern United States, as the photo of a house in Alabama above illustrates; is it headed to the White House, the halls of Congress and the Pentagon? Perhaps it's coming soon to your neighborhood, or it's there now. Look outside. Be ready.