And since no one of us have mentioned this yet,
here is a story about the not-so-secret power
of wisteria;

When I was a little girl, about one hundred years
ago, my grandparent's house (btw Paghat, I truly
enjoyed reading about your grandparent's and your
aunt's garden but didn't want to ruin it by adding
even a comment) was one of those old Spanish houses,
with a central patio that had a wishing well in the
middle and the rooms were built all around the first
and the second floor around that central square.

From the second floor balcony that went all around
the perimeter hung from what to my memory now
seem were hundreds of pots-what I know now were
beautiful white, soft blue, pale pinks and lavender
true pelargoniums, with long streams of variegated
tiny leaf ivy, and I remember looking up as child and
always wondering why all those "butterflies" didn't fly
away. It just never occurred to me that those"butterflies"
had roots.

The entire second floor balcony was supported by this
gigantic, at least to a child's eyes, ornate and very elaborate
black iron pillars that extended from one column to the
next in very beautiful arches. In each of the four corners,
a wisteria grew.

And grew.

And grew.

One morning we got up to a horrible sound. One side
of the balcony, and I mean probably all 50 feet of it had
been literally pulled away by the wisteria and the iron
was found to be completely twisted under the weight of
the beast. The base of three out of the four supporting
columns were no longer under the big terra-cotta tiles
that were now shattered six deep. It was totally
incomprehensible to me then that just that beautiful plant
could had -literally- uprooted raw iron that had been there,
almost 2 feet deep for over 60 years! But it did, and all
those beautiful Talavera de la Reina pots that had been
so carefully kept for as many years, laid in shards among
the ruins.

Still, I plant wisterias. We have a very young, approximately
5 years old that I am training as an umbrella. She and I are
locked in a battle of wills. For the present, and I guess she
does it to give me the confidence to make a fool of myself
later on, I am winning. I have braided the three original
stems and like Paghat said, I have no idea why they don't
strangle each other. I guess if they wait long enough, they
always find better fish to fry, as in very old raw iron columns,
for instance.

I have planted ours next to the steps that go into the
upper deck, by the beautiful roses that grace that area,
tiny beauties such as Anne Marie de Montravel that grows
somehow blissfully ignorant of the bully next to her.
The roots of the wisteria seem to avoid finding the way to
the roses, as I found out this year, when I practiced something
an old Japanese gardener taught me a long time ago: every
two to three years take a spade and cut a circle about two
or three feet away from the trunk of your plant, particularly
if you plan on achieving what I am trying to achieve: plenty
of blooms and little branches. When I cut through, all there
was there were some real narrow roots, barely the size of
my ring finger (size 5) -

I know however that in the end she will prevail. Long after
I am gone from this planet she will carefully and silently pick
up the pylons that support the structure that is the big deck
and the future owners will wake up one morning to find
the beautiful finished stairs in a mess of broken cedar and
distorted steps, the rebar that holds the stone bed by the
wisteria twisted into Chinese sticks and I am sure I know
even now who is going to have the last laugh.

Until then, I will feed her More Bloom, give her all the
haircuts she dares me to, and hope to get up one fine
May morning to the delightful fragrance of our Wisteria
floribunda 'Violacea Plena' and pat myself on the back for
whatever foolish thought made me buy her in the first place,
knowing as much as I unhappily have found about her
rapacious tendencies.

Would I do it again? in a New York minute!

Allegra