Fighting the Good Fight  Having myself felt an errant blackberry seed trying to burrow up through my gum and all the way to the brain, I can easily theorize how this plant spread over the Rockies: bird shit. The seed pod of the blackberry is durable enough to survive nuclear holocaust (so the cockroaches won't go hungry, I guess). I don't imagine a quick trip through a thrush will pose any real difficulty. Deer and elk are probably also far from blameless.
   Back at the ancestral manor in Bellevue, we had a whole empty lot right next door devoted to blackberries. Of course some of it was down to inattention, but for a time we thought they would be useful for keeping out trespassers and drunken teenagers, and we grew to rely on the annual crop of blackberries for pies, tarts and jam. And it seemed there were many worse plants that might be grow there instead were we to bulldoze the lot: deadly nightshade, poison ivy, and omigod dandelions.
   Our weekly chores included policing the perimeter. Occasionally, a surgical strike inside the fence would be necessary in response to a snagging, or when we suspected some worse pests (rats or drunken teenagers, for instance) were sheltered inside the thickets. Sometimes I might initiate a major bramble eradication campaign to mitigate or even distract from some childish transgression, like the time I knocked over the lamp taking penalty kicks in the living room. I figured, heck, they see me in the lot taking care of the blackberries, they'll forget all about playing soccer in the house.
   As a result of this containment policy, the brambles that finally reached over the fence had stalks as thick as my adolescent forearm. Their girth was certain proof against any shears we could find. Many years later, my parents sold the lot and moved into a townhouse.   (Tue 01 October 2002, 19.39 PDT)     @ #