Bamboo Covered in Snow

I ordered Bamboo.  I thought I’d plant some.  I imagined a bit of Asia in my back yard the way we'd had bamboo at our house in Pleasantville, that lived on for the first few years we lived there after moving in in 1977.  Would this bamboo grow?  Says it would.  I thought of those lovely pictures of Sichuan in my mind with forests of bamboo, covered in snow, pandas nibbling away.  Should be alright. 

They were stuck in customs for a while.  Fortunately there doesn’t seem to be a tariff on bamboo, nor an embargo of a particular grass.  I wondered though if I might not have to call my friends at customs and explain that I was just a guy, living in New Paltz who thought to plant some bamboo in his yard.  I hadn’t thought through whether the plant was an undesirable, invasive species or not.  Would it spread wildly and kills lots of other happy natives?  Would it throw the local ecosystem out of balance by providing succor to some dreaded mite that happily feeds off it?  Might not there be some vile bugs attached to these very plants themselves? 

A few days ago my wife announced that there were two big packages that had arrived.  I’d thought we’d be stuck there in customs for a while but there they were.  I unpackaged them and they were each sitting in ten gallon plastic holders.  They looked, not bad.  Dry, but not too dry.  I think that’s the best I could say they looked.  They were mostly green and seem to have survived shipping and detainment well.  My wife looked them over suspiciously.  “I don’t like bamboo.  This isn’t the nice bamboo.  We call this maozhu. ("hair bamboo.")  I don’t like it.”

Today I cut them out of their holders and dug a whole down near the edge of the forest and planted them.  I imagined them finally stretching out their roots after having been bottled int to that plastic drum for most of their life.  Pouring water on to them from a pink watering can I wished them both well.  Please, spread out and prosper.   

Thursday, 06/04/20