"Where the air smelled like snakes"

The hemlock around here is coming up a bumper crop. All the creek valleys, the margins of fields, ditches and yards are full of it. Early in the season, when I was out mending fence, I found a patch of it in a hard-to-reach corner of my land, and doused it with Roundup. This weekend, I say a large clump of it growing by my road; so today, I doused that with Roundup.

I hate hemlock.

I don't try to make the woods into a park. I normally leave things pretty much alone (aside from keeping grass and weeds choking the paths knocked down). Even poison ivy I leave where it grows.

But hemlock has my undying enmity. As does ailanthus. Thank God kudzu doesn't grow this far north (yet?). Hemlock, ailanthus, and kudzu form the unholy trinity of weeds.