Ecological Ring-Around-the-Rosy: When Invasives Aren’t All Bad

I am trying to kill the fig buttercup
the way I’m supposed to according
to the government website,
but right now there’s a bee on it.
— Ada Limón

I can suffer the blackberries their existence in September, when they provide me with pie. My work to remove them all, which will never be complete, picks back up in October once the berries have all been eaten by human or bird, fallen to the ground in a purple splat so dark it’s nearly black, or begun to petrify still on the vine. This work continues through the darkest and rainiest months, but stops again in March. Through the summer I attempt only to hold any ground I’ve gained.

The vines of a Himalayan blackberry bush, my least favorite rubus, live for two or three years and can grow to be as thick as my thumb. When they die back, new ones grow in their place, but the old ones remain — dead, dry and brown, but entangled and still sharp. Over time a veritable thicket forms, impenetrable to a human, but not bad at all as a nesting site for songbirds, who use it like they might a brush pile or stand of native rubus or other woody shrub. This is why removal efforts halt in March, as birdsong largely absent in the preceding months, begins to make its return. The risk of destroying a nest is too high — what good would an invasive-free piece of land be, if there were no birds?